TV Media

I've been getting pretty frustrated with watching national news. Even CNN, which I watch a lot of, has been wearing me out with it's incessant coverage of Michael Jackson. Yes, it was a big story but it just dominated (or still dominates) their airwaves.

In light of Walter Cronkite's death, I've been thinking about the state of media in today's climate...more specifically with media on TV.

I'm convinced that we'll never see another news personality with the weight of a Walter Cronkite. But that's also not necessarily a bad thing. A journalist with that much power or influence could be ill-advisable. But in some ways I'm envious that we don't have an institution like that that is completely trustworthy.

There's a whole host of problems with modern TV news coverage and I'm not even going to touch on the subject of the news being more entertainment than newsworthy. Instead I'm going to concentrate on two points that are in my view just as dangerous.

1. Filtering. Back in the day--a national news show--was the prime outlet for getting national and international news. Since they were (are) only thirty minutes long there has be a concerted effort to cover the big stories but also the stories that were news worthy. In this day in age of 24-hour cable news shows and with the internet being an endless stream of information the access to news is basically unlimited. And again that's not a bad thing...to have information readily available. That is a good thing for our democracy. But I've been noticing that consequently we've lost that professionalism of journalism to be able to filter the stories that are news worthy or that should be news worthy. For example, one day last month there were several people who came into the auction barn blithering on about how the federal government was going to (and this was like written in stone) tax farm animals for the waste that they produce. Predictably this led to these people to rant and rave about Obama (in an illogical manner) and about this and that...well...I think you get the gist of it. Noise pollution. Anyway, I went home and googled it. I couldn't find anything--at a legitimate news site--that said that this was going to be a reality. I finally found one article...that I regrettable can't find now...that had a quote from an EPA spokesperson basically saying there was absolutely no way that this was going to happen even though that idea had been thrown around in some capacity. Where all this hysteria originated from I'm still not sure. Yes, in the article that I linked from USA Today there was dialog of a cow tax but why that translated into it's going to happen and you can't stop it...I'm not sure. I'm speculating here a bit (but we've all seen this happen before) but what I think happened is that some outlet--either Fox News or a conservative radio show probably mentioned this fact in some capacity and it just snowballed from there. Granted people have their own filter and some use it better than others but it's quite possible that the idea was articulated in a manner that seemed like it was inevitable. So it might not have been their fault at all. In my view it shouldn't have been a story anyway or it should have been presented in a more factual way. The impression I get from reading about the cow tax now is that it was at that time not going to happen and it's not going to happen now. Ultimately sometimes there needs to be a filter on what is news worthy. Not every piece of information or quote is in itself news worthy. But when it's presented on TV or the radio I think people are likely to assume that there is some merit to it when there might not be any.

2. Blurring of fact and opinion. As I've read over the past few days, this notion drove Cronkite crazy. There are a host of TV shows on cable TV (and this includes Fox, CNN and MSNBC) that are a complete blurring of fact and opinion of news and gossip of speculation and spin. Granted a lot of people know these shows are opinion based. But they are presented as a traditional news show (like Cronkite's CBS's Evening News Show) in terms of format and topics. But they don't give the viewer objective concrete news. They give news but it's almost always manipulated in some manner to fit the hosts' perspective or what the audience expects them to think. I find it very frustrating even when watching the shows that fit into my political thought process. That's why I've been watching a lot of my news on Public Television. Yes, it's as dry as what one would expect but it delivers the news in professional and objective manner. And when there are opinions they are well thought-out and do not regress into a shouting match, which also drives me crazy with some of the other cable news shows.

Ultimately it's very dangerous for our democracy where news is being manipulated or not being covered in an objective manner. Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy but I think it's being tainted in a big way by people with their own agendas.