Net News Is Net Loss
It’s getting so I have to remember to be chagrined when I’m asked what I do and I say that I am a broadcast journalist. The media is held in lower esteem now than the government, I think. And the thing is...they’ve earned it.
I remember back in the days of Watergate, when being a newsman held some respect. That was when the news took on Richard Nixon and his henchmen. But ironically, it was the new celebrity of television news people that changed the meaning of the work, and for the worse. Call it Nixon’s revenge, but with the creation of television news celebrities came an influx of people, both at the network and the local levels, of people who were in it for the fame and not for the journalism.
Today, it is difficult to find a serious television journalist on the air. It’s unfortunate, but true. Even those with credentials — Rather, Brokaw, and Jennings — for example, have sold their souls for the corporate song. They may say that it doesn’t matter that they are earning millions of dollars, but it does. It changes the crowds with whom they circulate. And in the rarefied atmosphere of money and power, they steep themselves in the company of corporate titans and policy-makers.
And what they hear, they report. Which is rarely the truth. Or if the facts are correct, the context is absurdly off the mark. I remember back to the days of Reasoner, Reynolds, Huntley and Brinkley, and Walter Cronkite. They would have walked out the door rather than participate in the shameless huckstering that has all but pre-empted honest and effective news-gathering.
It used to be that you could watch the news and be informed. That is not the case anymore. The networks — and that includes Fox and CNN — report a minimalist account of the days events and present it in such a way that we don’t even have to think about what happened. They provide a context -- primarily through body language and tone of voice -- that tells us who are the good guys and who are the bad.
It’s really all about winners and losers and whose side we’re on. The simplified sports approach. They report on the Congress fighting with the White House and the Democrats with the Republicans, but they don’t tell us the substance of the issues. The fact is that we’ve been arguing over the same issues for thirty years, and the only thing that’s really changed is the ever-rising price of politicians.
Of course local television news makes the network effort look comprehensive and intellectual. We’ll look at that travesty another time.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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