News channels inevitably distort what's happening
News channels inevitably distort what's happening
By: Bill Mead
Topics:
Posted by editor Tue Sep 5, 2006 16:15:25 PDT
Viewed 651 times
1 response 0 comments My wife hates to be called a news junkie so I'll describe her as a Fox fiend. She turns on the Fox News channel when she first gets up, turning it off only to hit the sack at night.
I'm not complaining because this doesn't deprive me of much that I want to see on the boob tube. Plus, she is gracious about handing me the clicker whenever I want to see programming of real significance, like Bennie Hill or a rerun of “Police Academy”. Those video classics don't come on very often so our house is nearly always filled with the braying of hysterical newscasters trying to make every routine news story seem like the end of civilization as we know it.
This isn't ridicule on my part. If Fox or CNN hired me I would do the same. How would you like to be faced with the daunting task of holding viewers' attention around the clock on a day when nature is quiet and most humans are on their good behavior?
What you would do is precisely what the news channels do. You would roll surveillance camera footage of a pathetic doper trying to rob a two-pump gas station in West Cornfield, Mo., and make it sound like John Dillinger is on the prowl again. You would show this every ten minutes from dawn till dusk. In between there would be the predictable car chase that ends with some schmuck in baggy pants lying face down on the pavement, surrounded by hundreds of cops. I suspect it's really the same car chase every time, but you know how cynical I am.
Don't get me wrong. When really important stuff is going on, the TV news channels usually do a creditable job if not always a great one. At those times, most of the criticism comes from people who don't like what's going on rather than how the reporters are covering it. The news channels become most troublesome on slow news days when common sense would dictate simply posting a sign on the screen announcing that nothing worthy of note is going on anywhere. Of course they can't do that with all the commercials they have to air. So they feel compelled to turn molehills into mountains.
When I watch news channel coverage of the war on terror I can't help wondering if we ever could have achieved success in World War II if that struggle had been subject to the same graphic coverage being given to the current military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are still learning of messed up World War II operations that lend credence to the prevailing view of historians who say we muddled our way as much as fought our way to victory back in those pre-television days in the 1940s. Fortunately for the war effort, the public wasn't aware of that at the time.
As a half-baked journalist myself, I tend to be sympathetic toward TV reporters and editors who have to take the big stories and the little stories and pretend they are all created equal. Besides, there is no official definition of what makes news. One famous editor probably came as close as anyone when he said legitimate news is whatever made his mother say, “My goodness!”
| Send to a Friend | Report a Violation |
