"Networks of Shame" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Networks of Shame

There was a time when America watched the evening news almost like they went to church. Back then, people felt it was an American obligation to be informed, and the networks did a good job of presenting the important information of the day. My parents, who didn’t even like television from the get go, would watch actually Uncle Walter at the dinner table.

I’m talking about the early Seventies, the hey-day of network television news. Cronkite, Huntley-‘n-Brinkley and Harry Reasoner were all highly respected journalists who told America what we needed to know in a straight-forward manner. Correspondent reports were succinct. Two dozen news stories were reported each night. There were very few features and no fluff.

Then Roone Arledge was put in charge of the news division at ABC. He’d had great success in building up their sports programming and corporate thought he might turn the news into a profit center. He did, which was great for the stockholders but terrible for the country. He chose to put style over substance, and the journalism suffered. As Arledge gained, the other networks followed.

The result today is that all three networks are more hat than cattle. They stylize everything and hype themselves shamelessly. They globetrot their once pretty-boy anchors and feed viewers a plateload of entertainment features. No longer providing a nightly news digest, they’ve fallen into irrelevance. They don’t cover the news anymore, which is why their ratings have plummeted.

Worse, they pretend they’re about news, and they have left the nation ill-informed, a very dangerous condition for people who elect their own leaders. They are mere color commentators at the emperor’s parade and instead of observing that he’s naked as a jaybird, they describe the clothes he says he’s wearing.

The familiar rap is that they are whores for the huge corporations that have a financial stake in preserving the status quo. Perhaps, or it may just be that they are overpaid, egotistical, intellectual cowards.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.