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The Sad State of Television News

A news legend recently left us in Walter Cronkite.  The "most trusted man in America" at one time is officially gone, and behind him he leaves a television news landscape that scarcely resembles what he set out to do.

Television news, and especially cable news, now heavily dominates the way many Americans get their news.  Even the government itself is not immune to this; it's a well known fact that the current White House has MSNBC on constantly, and that the Bush people had FOX News on constantly during their tenure.  It's doubtful that either of them gleans much except the occasional ego boost from watching those networks, or that those heavily slanted organizations have greatly informed either of them about those that disagree with their policies.  Nor is it likely that those viewing at home truly take anything away from those networks but a feeling of validation in having their view of the world confirmed once again.

Out of the three main cable networks, CNN is by far the best, but that isn't exactly saying much.  CNN is still in many ways a joke of a network, an organization that does manage to achieve some level of "balance" but rarely of any depth, often focusing heavily on stories like celebrity scandals and taking Democratic and Republican Party talking points at face value (at least when it isn't vainly trying to be popular by plugging its Twitter feeds).  Like the other networks, CNN often props up partisan ideologues - one could say "puppets" - from both sides of a debate and has them battle it out, but it isn't honest debate.  These puppets on the cable stage are essentially just providing theater for the audience at home, shouting at each other but rarely informing.

I myself took a trip fairly recently to the FOX News studio in Washington and was able to see how it is done there.  One of the interesting things was seeing people who had just been fiercely shouting at each other on television enthusiastically shaking hands in the green room minutes later as familiar friends.  It's nothing personal, it seems, and they are perfectly capable of being civil and friendly in their discussion when they don't have cameras pointed at them.  Why, though, do they not extend the same courtesies on the air?  Would a calm, rational debate free of shouting matches somehow bring less to the issue?  It is likely that the viewer would be far better informed than they are when obscure political strategists merely shout over each other.

Of course, the cornerstone of any cable network is its commentators.  The leaders in the pack are most easily recognizable for their smug sense of superiority, their tendancy to cut off the mics of anyone who disagrees with them, and quick tempers that flare up whenever their parent company is attacked.  Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, and many others lead this pack, and for every mostly reasonable and well-articulated host like Rachel Maddow, there is a Lou Dobbs waiting in the wings to spout off paranoid nonsense.

The worst of any of them, though, may have to be Glenn Beck.  This man in many ways embodies everything that is wrong with the news business today.  Now, I have made jokes on the internet and in conversation with friends about Beck in the past, but I am not trying to be comical when I say that he exhibits clear signs of mental instability.  His on-air crying spells and tantrums, his wild conspiracy theories, and even his wildly fluctuating facial expressions seem to show a man who is not entirely "together" and whom, unfortunately, has been given a television stage by an employer that should probably be paying for therapy instead.  Beck's crazy ravings on the air display a certain sincerity but also a lack of a grasp on reality and an unhealthy tendancy to invoke emotions rather than facts.  What's worse, the audience hangs on every word, eager to see what crazy thing he'll do next, as Beck seems almost unaware that he and his rants against authority are being used by a corporation with no real interest in spreading truth as much as merely gaining ratings, even at the expense of the truth he feels he is spreading.  Beck is like a Howard Beale for the new millenium, a figure who stays on the air precisely because his crazy antics and mental instability drive more ratings from those eager to see what he'll pull next.  (Indeed, Beck himself has positively compared himself to the "Network" character, which would seem to indicate that he missed the point of that film entirely.)

With characters like Beck, the networks are not trying to spread information or even informed opinion but are simply being irresponsible and selling mindless sensationalism.  Each sells itself as the place to get the "truth," unfiltered by corporate overlords and government bureaucrats, but the reality is that it is those people whom are primarily running and benefiting from these networks.  They sell themselves as being tough on their subjects, but while FOX and MSNBC often pummel the opposing side, all of them are ultimately easy on the government and politicians they've supposedly set out to cover.  In interviews, their spin and deceptions are not called out, only occasionally countered by an equally disingenuous spinster from the opposite side of the aisle.  Politicians have become so coddled by the media, in fact, that on the rare occasion the media makes them look bad, it is often completely their doing; Sarah Palin, for instance, shocked us all when she made Katie Couric actually look like a real journalist, simply by being unable to answer Couric's most basic questions of her.  Following a debate or a press conference, the first place journalists go is "spin alley," where they quite literally receive the spin of politicians so that they can report if verbatim minutes later on television.

A recent survey found that many people trusted "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart more than other television news anchors.  While I do the scientific nature of that survey, and I doubt it for other reasons as well, there is probably at least a grain of truth in it that speaks badly of the television news media.  While "Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" are comedy programs, and not news programs, one thing they do that actual news networks have largely stopped doing is simply calling political figures, and for that matter media figures, on their bullshit.  A tape of Bush or Obama giving a recent address can be contrasted with an earlier quote in which they said something completely contradictory.  Cheney's claim that "no one could have predicted" the difficulties in Iraq can be contrasted with an interview in 1994 in which he basically admits that a total invasion of Iraq would be a bad idea.  While Stewart and his cohorts do not actively seek to inform, it is a sad reality that they are among the few media figures still willing to occasionally do that hard work and even call out those who appear as guests for their hypocrisy. 

The problems with the news business (which are not limited to the television networks) are incredibly numerous and complex, but with television in particular they thankfully raise some easy solutions.  The networks may have decreased their bullshit detectors over the years, and decreased spending on international reporting while upping the amount going into Michael Jackson and Carrie Prejean, but this business model is reliant on the viewer continuing to watch and reward their incompetence.  And there's one thing every one of us can do to get the networks to improve themselves.

Switch them off.