On the Modern American Media

This week, dozens died in Iraq and Afghanistan, Britain changed heads of state, hundreds died in Darfur, and the Vice President has declared himself a member of neither the executive nor the legislative branch, while still somehow being part of the Constitutional framework.

But the main stories were the iPhone and Paris Hilton getting out of prison.

This is the plight of the modern American media-the ‘newstainment’, 24-hour news cycle owned by corporations instead of people, making it not a medium of important information, but a way for the benefit of ratings.

40 years ago, network stations never cared about ratings, but their modus operandi was for quality journalism. You had news anchors such as Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, and, a decade or two later, the Big Three anchors-Rather, Brokaw, and the late Peter Jennings. You had Bob Woodard in his prime at the Washington Post. You had news that wasn’t terribly editorialized, somewhere between the truth and yellow journalism. However, you don’t get quality journalism anymore; what do you get when you watch TV news, the most influential and outreaching medium, now? You get 5 minutes of actual news-today, generally 2008 election coverage, and 20 minutes of human interest stories.

And don’t even get me started on the Big 5 cable news networks, the ‘24-hour’ networks: MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, CNN Headline News, and Fox News. They’re really a combination of almost all government spin in prime time evening hours, with entertainment news in the other parts of the day. For example, during the Paris Hilton jailing, on MSNBC there was a ‘Paris Watch’ split-screen about 12 to 13 hours of the day. Tucker Carlson, who used to be a right-wing spinster on CNN’s Crossfire, and Joe Scarborough, a former Congressman(R-FL) who now has his own eponymous Country, were tracking Paris, as well. Somewhat respected bodies of information have now stooped to entertainment news. You let the bow tie a little too loose, Tucker. Joe, the sponsors must have gotten to you, taking your brain prisoner.

Even PBS, the broadcasting system paid for by our tax dollars, is in trouble. Recently, the conservatives in the Republican Party took control of PBS, and also took Bill Moyers, a nonpartisan journalist, off his show, NOW, after one story that angered them. They then put Moyers on a new show, Bill Moyers’ Journal, that has lesser journalistic leeway, for they would not like to see but a dent into their credibility. NOW today is a soapbox for the Republican ‘small-government’ movement.

Finally, there are 6 corporations controlling almost all of our Audio, Video, and Print Media: News Corporation, GE, Disney, Clear Channel, Time Warner and Tribune. This is like the Teddy Roosevelt-era trusts that he tried to bust, like Rockefeller and Carnegie revisited! While they preach ‘the news,’ they spew a concoction of little news, much of which is filtered to meet the corporations’ needs, entertainment, and human interest.

Here’s what we can do to make journalism what it ought to be in the States:

• Bust the trusts of the news networks.
• Make C-SPAN a network on “free television”, not cable.
• Make PBS a station controlled not directly by government, but controlled indirectly by the Smithsonian.