May 29, 2007
How Important Is Television News? II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 11:50 AM EST I abandoned the news programs of the three major networks several years ago, having usually watched NBC Nightly News since the old Huntley-Brinkley days. I am not alone, as their ratings have been in steady and serious decline for more than 20 years. My objection was the ever-increasing emphasis on “soft news,” especially features aimed at the AARP demographic that is the heart and soul of the aging audience for network news. Being a member in good standing of that demographic doesn’t make me want to listen to reports on kidney dialysis and old people moving back from Florida to be with their children in their final years, thank you very much. I want to listen to the news. Now I watch Special Report with Britt Hume on Fox News Channel, which runs from six to seven, at least in the Eastern time zone. Its virtues are many besides its anchor, who, I think, is the best in the business. For one thing, it’s all hard news of the day, no soft, feel-good features of the locating-the-blind-boy’s-stolen-puppy variety. For another, it really seems to me to be, to coin a phrase, fair and balanced. Network news—along with CNN and MSNBC—remains permeated with an unconscious liberal bias. By that I don’t mean a tough-on-Republicans-soft-on-Democrats bias (although that happens, of course) but rather the unquestioning acceptance of the idea that the liberal world view is the only one decent people have, that the American political universe is divided into two classes: moderates and right-wing nuts. Hume, who does not share that notion, seems to me consciously to try hard to be fair and balanced, whereas his competitors unconsciously assume that, being “moderates,” they are, ipso facto, fair and balanced. So I would recommend Special Report. I don’t recommend Bill O’Reilly any more than Joshua Zeitz would. I find him obnoxious to put it mildly. But then, proving myself fair and balanced, I can’t stand CNN’s Lou Dobbs either. I have a limited tolerance for blowhards, even blowhards who earn several million dollars a year blowing hard. Mr. Zeitz notes a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism finding that Fox spent more daytime air on Anna Nicole Smith than on Iraq and less on Iraq than CNN and MSNBC did. Having sometimes tuned into The Big Story with John Gibson, which precedes Britt Hume, I can certainly verify that she got more than her fair share of attention (personally I would put her fair share at about 10 seconds; I also have a limited tolerance for bimbos). Having run that story into the ground, Gibson’s show is now obsessing about Rosie O’Donnell. Why a Fox News Channel show would give ABC’s The View a free 10-minute infomercial every afternoon is a mystery to me. But I wonder why just daytime news was measured. None of the “news channels” are pure news, especially in the daytime. They are all a mix of opinion, fluff, financial ticker, etc. I wonder what measuring the evening, or even the whole 24-hour day, would reveal. Mr. Zeitz mentions that he can understand why Fox shies away from reports on Iraq (Special Report certainly doesn’t), but then, maybe the reason CNN and MSNBC have so much Iraq news is that they are only too delighted to report the bad news. This tendency is nicely spoofed in the Day by Day cartoon series for Memorial Day. I would be interested to see a comparison of the various news and broadcast channels’ signature evening news programs regarding Iraq coverage and fluff coverage. I bet Fox does nicely (more Iraq, less fluff) compared with the others, but that’s only a guess. As for the question, how important is television news, about the only thing for sure is that the news business, like every other aspect of publishing and communications, is in a profound state of flux, thanks to the Internet. The news business that I grew up with (I can remember when New York City had at least seven daily newspapers) is long gone. The news business of the 1980s and 1990s (let’s call it the CNN era) is rapidly disappearing. What will replace it is anybody’s guess. But one thing is certain. The news business in, say, 2032 will be utterly different from what it is today, just as the overland transportation business in 1860 was utterly different from what it had been in 1835, thanks to the railroad.
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