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USA Edition | Today Is Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
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| Bulletin: Establishment Caught Stealing America | « Scan Content In The Order It Was Published » | Reset: Failed Rules Of Engagement | |
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G-20 News Makers: British P.M. Gordon Brown - U.S. President Barack Obama
The slow death of television news has been painful for everyone involved. Trusting viewers have been cheated — albeit willingly — as were the young and innocent who grew up believing that news was entertaining, or endless drivel about the ordinary dust of life. Along the way, this nation fell into a somnambulant haze in which illusions drove probity, relevancy and credibility into the distant background. The legacy from big media’s failed television news theocracy has proven disastrous for our economy even as it has put American freedoms at risk.
Robert Butche
Giving Appearances: U.S. Gen. Raymond Odierno with CBS Anchor Katie Couric In Iraq
In today’s broadcast news environment it’s only stardom and money that matter. Everything else is expendable. News gathering is not a profit center. Important events that occur away from major media markets are optional. In depth reporting is contrary to achieving audience metrics. Happy talk, engaging personalities and entertaining packages have all be replaced serious news content. Engaging and entertaining content is so desirable that NBC Nightly News filled its entire opening hard news segment with a Martin Fletcher novella about locating the family of one viewer’s family in aftermath of the recent Italian earthquake.
America's TV Star Anchor Personalities: Brian Williams, Katie Couric, Charles Gibson
Stardom is to network news broadcasts what sub-prime mortgages were to bankers — an easy way to make money by doing the wrong thing while pretending to be doing the right thing. This nation’s bankers and financial institutions made billions by promoting illusory home mortgages known as liar-loans, just as America’s television news organizations made their ill-begotten gains by promoting cheap pseudo-news as if legitimate journalistic enterprise.
Hundreds of excellent journalists were made to sacrifice their jobs or careers for big media profitability. For over two decades, network bureaus at home and abroad have been closing, journalists and editors terminated to shore up network profitability. Broadcast news workers, once the best in the nation, lost their jobs in wave after wave of cutbacks.
Illusions Over Reality
Star Power and Personalities Replace What Matters Most
The systematic reduction in news gathering at the major networks in recent decades traded probative news content and skeptical editing for starpower. Doing so was immensely profitable, but a Faustian bargain at best — for the consequences of short term decision making are now at hand.
The age of stardom values up-front personalities and the superficial trappings of journalism over reportorial strength and skeptical editing. When it comes to making money in television news, illusion always trumps reality. The massive cuts in news gathering costs not only flowed to the bottom-line, they also fueled what has become an avalanche of money flowing to handsomely paid anchors and what has become an unending parade of complex and expensive news sets.
In the age of illusion over reality monies once spent for news gathering now go to create the illusion that up-front personalities are somehow engaged in legitimate journalistic enterprise. One of the biggest frauds are unnecessary remote broadcasts whose only purpose is to create the illusion of genuine journalistic activity.
What if the immense funds required to transport and support television stars and production personal solely for the purpose of making them seem relevant were spent on legitimate and probative news gathering and editing? Or better yet, as some have suggested, why not do away with anchors to better deliver legitimate news about what matters most?
In late March ( 2009 ) all three U. S. television news operations dispatched their anchors to cover the G20 Summit being held in London ( April 1-2, 2009 ). The purpose in doing so has far more to do with sagging viewership than legitimate journalistic engagement with either the principal story or viewers.
As nearly always the case, the presence of network television stars offers little to advancing the story. To the contrary, the traveling medicine show environment created by the presence of anchor personalities is very often counter-productive such as was the case with the I-35 bridge collapse, nearly every hurricane, and frequent anchor forays into Iraq. Given a level of technology that permits instantaneous reporting from nearly anyplace on the planet, the side show atmosphere that accompanies network anchor personalities is neither necessary nor productive.
Television news is dying today due to mismanagement, wrongful dismantling of news gathering capabilities, and profligate profiteering by big media. It’s not exactly news, but until broadcast journalism is purged of entertainers and profiteers, neither nation nor economy may fully recover.
