CABLE NEWS - LEBANON MAKES WAY FOR JONBENET
You have to hand it to the people that make the decisions at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. They are so certain of the rank stupidity of the American viewing public that they seamlessly shifted their wall-to-wall coverage of the Israeli-Lebanese war to all JonBenet all the time.
It is a well known fact that the tradition of insightful and in-depth broadcast journalism that began with Edward R. Murrow has been changed by corporate ownership primarily concerned with ratings and the bottom line. In the struggle for minds and eyeballs, the surrender of broadcast news to the realities of the marketplace is a phenomenon that Murrow himself struggled with towards the end of his career and is a problem that will continue to exist as long as there is commercial television. Americans have become so inured to the watering down of hard news programming and thoughtful analysis that they have come to expect little from their broadcasters. As an avid news consumer, I was of course aware of this as I watched the news coming out of the Mideast over the past month. Then the JonBenet story hit. It struck me that there was something truly unseemly about the amount of time cable news was devoting to the questionable confession of a publicity-seeking pedophile after investing so much of its airtime on the broad human tragedy in Lebanon and Israel.
Nobody wants to minimize the death of a child. The fact that the inconclusive investigation and media attention paid to the Ramsey case had all but convicted the unfortunate girl's parents of being guilty of the crime undoubtedly added to the appeal this story has had in the minds of television programmers. Placed in juxtaposition to the events in Lebanon and Israel, however - events that could certainly have serious ramifications for global politics well into the future - the resurrection of the 10 year-old, sordid tale of JonBenet Ramsey and the elevation of its newsworthiness just seems bizarre.
As satellite communications technology evolves and the demand for international news coverage grows, the act of bringing a live war into the living room of viewers becomes an enormous challenge. Like many others, I had been glued to the cable news networks as they reported the up-to-the minute, unfolding drama of the Mideast war. Though caught somewhat off guard by the sudden onset of the crisis, the 3 cable giants leaped into the fray and managed to cover the fast-moving events with a high level of professionalism. From the correspondents risking life and limb under fire to the interrogation of politicians, government spokespersons, and analysts in the studio, the news teams conveyed the gravity and emotion of the conflict, provided needed background and managed to ask hard-hitting questions while maintaining the objectivity necessary for good journalism.
Even Fox News, known for its poorly cloaked ideological bias, was able to effectively present the key strategic details of the conflict, provide a sense of its immediate tragedy, and put in context its larger political implications. For a moment, I began to think that the events of the last several weeks would remind the suits in the programming departments of the Big 3 that most of the world gets its news from television, that most of the world acquires its image of itself through television, and that these facts place an enormous responsibility into the hands of those who make the decisions about what people will see on their screens. Then I remembered Scott Peterson, Terry Schivo, Michael Jackson, Andrea Yates, Natalee Holloway, Monica Lewinsky and O.J.
The depth of the inane abyss into which the around-the-clock cable news business had fallen was first evident to me when I returned to the United States a few years ago after living in Europe for a while. I had left the U.S. a few weeks after 9/11 and had spent close to three years adjusting to a new culture in France and a new television landscape. Even with my limited French language skills, I had come to appreciate the standard nightly news presentation and the numerous magazine and panel discussion shows, where regional, national and international events were examined in sometimes excruciating detail and without commercial interruption. As anyone who has spent time in France will tell you, the French certainly offer a generous portion of viewing pablum, including an abundance of idiotic game shows. When it comes to the pressing issues of the day, however, one has to conclude that the French simply take the world more seriously.
When I returned to America in 2004 and switched on cable news, I was shocked to discover how in a few short years it had evolved - or devolved - into a side-show, a three ring circus whose mandate was to entertain and to titillate as much as inform. Lurid tabloid reporting was being mixed with real news stories, agenda-driven, biased commentary confused with thoughtful analysis until it was all virtually indistinguishable. I realized of course that the strategy was to grab people's attention, hold it for the short program segments that exist between commercials and hopefully guarantee the viewers' return by offering appropriate teasers before the breaks.
Programming executives know that viewers have an inability to concentrate, and in a broadcast universe that consists of hundreds of cable and satellite channels and additional computer- based options, there is a war to attract and hold onto viewers. That this method of programming may in fact contribute to our fractured attention span and diminish our ability to evaluate complex ideas is probably not a mater of concern to the programmers. It should, however, be a matter of concern to us, for it can have grave consequences for our democracy. One need not look much further than the White House.
Television programming is a mirror reflection of how we view ourselves and we shouldn't forget that it is a window on our culture for the rest of the world. Perhaps it isn't surprising that the picture it presents is a goulash of great achievements, of power and weakness, of the noble, the mundane and the profoundly disturbed.
As of a few weeks ago, the country was tracking the path of Katyusha rockets raining on Israeli cities and of Israeli bombs aimed at Hezbollah. As the cease-fire brought the conflict to an end, the cable guys quickly transitioned to checking the hourly progress of the plane from Thailand carrying John Mark Karr, the man who claims to know something about the death of JonBenet Ramsey. The details of the suspect's involvement are not clear. What we know for certain is that Mr. Karr requested that the Thai authorities provide him with a new set of clothes so he could look his best for the cameras.
You have to hand it to the people that make the decisions at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. They are so certain of the rank stupidity of the American viewing public that they seamlessly shifted their wall-to-wall coverage of the Israeli-Lebanese war to all JonBenet all the time.
It is a well known fact that the tradition of insightful and in-depth broadcast journalism that began with Edward R. Murrow has been changed by corporate ownership primarily concerned with ratings and the bottom line. In the struggle for minds and eyeballs, the surrender of broadcast news to the realities of the marketplace is a phenomenon that Murrow himself struggled with towards the end of his career and is a problem that will continue to exist as long as there is commercial television. Americans have become so inured to the watering down of hard news programming and thoughtful analysis that they have come to expect little from their broadcasters. As an avid news consumer, I was of course aware of this as I watched the news coming out of the Mideast over the past month. Then the JonBenet story hit. It struck me that there was something truly unseemly about the amount of time cable news was devoting to the questionable confession of a publicity-seeking pedophile after investing so much of its airtime on the broad human tragedy in Lebanon and Israel.
Nobody wants to minimize the death of a child. The fact that the inconclusive investigation and media attention paid to the Ramsey case had all but convicted the unfortunate girl's parents of being guilty of the crime undoubtedly added to the appeal this story has had in the minds of television programmers. Placed in juxtaposition to the events in Lebanon and Israel, however - events that could certainly have serious ramifications for global politics well into the future - the resurrection of the 10 year-old, sordid tale of JonBenet Ramsey and the elevation of its newsworthiness just seems bizarre.
As satellite communications technology evolves and the demand for international news coverage grows, the act of bringing a live war into the living room of viewers becomes an enormous challenge. Like many others, I had been glued to the cable news networks as they reported the up-to-the minute, unfolding drama of the Mideast war. Though caught somewhat off guard by the sudden onset of the crisis, the 3 cable giants leaped into the fray and managed to cover the fast-moving events with a high level of professionalism. From the correspondents risking life and limb under fire to the interrogation of politicians, government spokespersons, and analysts in the studio, the news teams conveyed the gravity and emotion of the conflict, provided needed background and managed to ask hard-hitting questions while maintaining the objectivity necessary for good journalism.
Even Fox News, known for its poorly cloaked ideological bias, was able to effectively present the key strategic details of the conflict, provide a sense of its immediate tragedy, and put in context its larger political implications. For a moment, I began to think that the events of the last several weeks would remind the suits in the programming departments of the Big 3 that most of the world gets its news from television, that most of the world acquires its image of itself through television, and that these facts place an enormous responsibility into the hands of those who make the decisions about what people will see on their screens. Then I remembered Scott Peterson, Terry Schivo, Michael Jackson, Andrea Yates, Natalee Holloway, Monica Lewinsky and O.J.
The depth of the inane abyss into which the around-the-clock cable news business had fallen was first evident to me when I returned to the United States a few years ago after living in Europe for a while. I had left the U.S. a few weeks after 9/11 and had spent close to three years adjusting to a new culture in France and a new television landscape. Even with my limited French language skills, I had come to appreciate the standard nightly news presentation and the numerous magazine and panel discussion shows, where regional, national and international events were examined in sometimes excruciating detail and without commercial interruption. As anyone who has spent time in France will tell you, the French certainly offer a generous portion of viewing pablum, including an abundance of idiotic game shows. When it comes to the pressing issues of the day, however, one has to conclude that the French simply take the world more seriously.
When I returned to America in 2004 and switched on cable news, I was shocked to discover how in a few short years it had evolved - or devolved - into a side-show, a three ring circus whose mandate was to entertain and to titillate as much as inform. Lurid tabloid reporting was being mixed with real news stories, agenda-driven, biased commentary confused with thoughtful analysis until it was all virtually indistinguishable. I realized of course that the strategy was to grab people's attention, hold it for the short program segments that exist between commercials and hopefully guarantee the viewers' return by offering appropriate teasers before the breaks.
Programming executives know that viewers have an inability to concentrate, and in a broadcast universe that consists of hundreds of cable and satellite channels and additional computer- based options, there is a war to attract and hold onto viewers. That this method of programming may in fact contribute to our fractured attention span and diminish our ability to evaluate complex ideas is probably not a mater of concern to the programmers. It should, however, be a matter of concern to us, for it can have grave consequences for our democracy. One need not look much further than the White House.
Television programming is a mirror reflection of how we view ourselves and we shouldn't forget that it is a window on our culture for the rest of the world. Perhaps it isn't surprising that the picture it presents is a goulash of great achievements, of power and weakness, of the noble, the mundane and the profoundly disturbed.
As of a few weeks ago, the country was tracking the path of Katyusha rockets raining on Israeli cities and of Israeli bombs aimed at Hezbollah. As the cease-fire brought the conflict to an end, the cable guys quickly transitioned to checking the hourly progress of the plane from Thailand carrying John Mark Karr, the man who claims to know something about the death of JonBenet Ramsey. The details of the suspect's involvement are not clear. What we know for certain is that Mr. Karr requested that the Thai authorities provide him with a new set of clothes so he could look his best for the cameras.
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