I was reading Roger Ebert’s excellent piece about the sad template that Bill O’Reilly is currently etching, and it occurred to me that the problem on the 24-hour news network isn’t the creeping partisan politics masquerading as news, it’s the networks themselves.
Consider: prior to the 1980s, the national news was a half-hour long and took place once a day. Paltry? Probably. But also well researched, fact-checked, and thought-out.
Before the advent of continued news coverage, the people charged with reporting the evening news took the time to consider what was important, how to frame it so that the relevant parts were underlined, and, finally, how to present it so that everyone in America could understand it. This wasn’t because they were geniuses, it was a function of having 23 and 1/2 hours a day to work on the problem: there was time to try to get the news right.
Now we have three news networks straining to fill 24 hours every day. News is reported on the spot and, thanks to the profit pressure of niche marketing, the framing is done through the particular political lens of the network reporting it. Barack Obama takes a flight in Air Force One and FOX News decides to talk about the waste of money involved, while MSNBC uses it as proof that our Glorious Leader isn’t bound by gravity like normal men.
But even if the politics were completely removed from the 24-hour news networks, there’d still be the problem of real-time reporting, which gives you an idea of what’s going on, but doesn’t help you understand why you should care. Further, the fire hose of information is so overwhelming that even Adrian Veidt wouldn’t be able to follow it all.
In a lot of ways, the news industry mirrors the porn industry.
Think about it. If you wanted to make a porno in 1975, you needed to put work in to do it. Film, lighting, editing, actors, distribution — these were (teehee) hard to come by. You also had to think about appealing to the most people — you couldn’t just do a whole movie devoted to leather mask fetishists; you’d never get a return on your investment that way. Since there wasn’t home video, you had entice people out to the theater to watch it, which means giving some story (because, hey, if there’s a story, you’re not a complete perv-o for watching it, right?). Story means scripting, and scripting means (at least a little) forethought.
Now, if you want to make a porno, you just take two (or seven, or forty) meth addicts, turn on the digital camera, and wait.
Wading through all the pornography that’s out there is just as daunting as wading through all the news that’s out there — and believe me, I’ve tried. With quantity, there’s a natural drop-off in quality. What’s worse is that the quantity makes the quality harder to find.
Imagine if there weren’t any CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, Headline News, CNBC, or FOX Business. Imagine if we went back to the old model of three networks, one half-hour a day, once a day. We could supplement instantaneous need to know with the Internet, and then have our national discussion of the days events together, at the same time every day.
Wouldn’t that be a lot nicer than hearing Keith Olbermann shout at Bill O’Reilly, who’s shouting at Larry King, who doesn’t know where he is or why there are so many cameras pointed at him?
Clacked by Jay Black 
on Jun 23, 2009 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
Did you compare the cable news channel to meth addict porn stars? I think I’m in love. haha
CNN shows CNN International on weekends to save money, it’s out of the UK. I find what they show and how they tell it to be so much greater. It was a woman talking about Iran in front of some set that is most likely just a green screen. It was like real reporting and nothing special. That’s what we need here.
Hm.
To be honest I think Vivid Entertainment does quality porn. The 24 hour news networks are producing garbage. I think it’s an insult to Vivid that you compare them with those networks. Even more so I think you had to compare the networks with meth addict porn because that’s about the production value of the newscasts over there in the US. I’m not saying that we don’t have such crapshoot programs here either but you can only underline in thick red what Jon Stewart on The Daily Show has been saying the last couple of months, and that is just what you said. The news networks aren’t doing their job. They are not investigating, they are not doing journalistic work, they are basically just trying to fill their hours as cheap as they can without doing actual journalistic work. It’s just horrible. If you compare that to BBC International or even CNN International or any of the investigative news programs on the german public channels (paid for by mandatory fees like in the UK), you suddenly get the picture that the world is actually much more diverse, that Jon and Kate are not the most intersting thing currently going on, that you don’t have to resort to TDS to get background information… *sigh*
The other option would’ve been to compare the news networks to the way americans nurish themselves – fast food. That’s about the level. The nurishment you get from a burger is about the same as the informational value you get from a Fox or CNN or MSNBC newscast.
I keep repeating myself but it’s all so extremely close to “Idiocracy” it has to sicken anybody thinking about it.
I mean look at Twitter and Iran. That’s all such a joke. Jon Stewart (again) put it best: Twitter doesn’t save Iran. Iran saved Twitter.