The Truth Machine

One man's musings

Five Things 24 Hour News Should Do

In the wake of news cycles that have variously centered on “Balloon Boy”, Meghan McCain’s tits, Obama Vs Fox, and the tragedy at Ft. Hood I have been giving even more thought than usual to the state of 24 hour news and what it should be. Here are my suggestions for making the 24 hour news cycle more palatable – or at least more likely to include a warning sticker that it is not palatable (“In the case of outrage lasting more than 4 hours, please call your doctor as this may be a sign of a much more serious condition called a moral center”). Take a look, then share your five.

1. GO AWAY

The whole reason for numbers 2 thru 5 is that this is a lost cause, but I honestly believe the world would be a better place without the 24 hour news cycle. I admit that as an information and politics wonk/addict I was besides myself with joy when CNN first came on the scene. I also admit that there are times when a story requires that level of coverage. I will even admit that there is 24 hours worth of news (see #2), but that is not what 24 hour news serves. Instead it chooses one to three stories and covers them to death. Since they all choose the same one to three stories they have to come up with more and more information to fill the time. The result is dozen of talking heads judging every aspect over and over again to the point that people just tune out. Also, stories are chosen more by how much time you can fill than they are by actual importance. If they only had an hour a day they would have to offer new information, compactly presented with the relevant facts, in order to compete with each other. As a result people would have more information and less bullshit. Yes, Pat Buchanan is entitled to his warped opinion that Sotomayor was an affirmative action appointment, but I don’t really need to hear it ten times on ten different programs. Plus, the 24 hour news leads to intellectual laziness. “Experts” feel remarkably comfortable getting facts wrong, since they will have a chance to either clarify or obfuscate what they said an hour from when they said it. Political spokesman are offered the opportunity to easily float “trial balloons”, adjusting their argument from one hour to the next depending on reaction to it rather than having to actually decide on a stance in advance knowing that, for at least a day, they will be held to it.

2. SINCE YOU WON’T GO AWAY, TRY COVERING MORE NEWS

Darfur, anyone? Palestinian self-policing successes in the West Bank? Massive increase in local protests in China? Transformation of Russia into a Kleptocracy? Contradiction in US Foreign Policy in treatment of Saudi government Vs refusal to speak with Taliban? Refugee situation in Western Pakistan? Women’s issues all over the world? Poverty in the United States? yadda yadda yadda. Seriously, is there so little news that MSNBC has to spend its weekend re-running Lockup a gazillion times? Which brings me to…

3. IF YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE A POINT-OF-VIEW, DON’T YIELD TIME.

This is directed specifically at MSNBC. As a liberal/progressive/socialist/communist/America-hater (I am defining myself as FOX News would), I am glad to have a national news outlet that counters FOX. So why do you give them the floor for the entire weekend? I often work late and want to be entertained when I get home, so I and many like me are most likely to pay attention to the 24 hour news on the weekend. Unfortunately, all I get from MSNBC on the weekends is Lockup or To Catch A Predator. Are you really going to force me to turn on CNN or FOX to find out anything current and relevant? MSNBC, has it occurred to you that the reason you have lower ratings than the other news station is that people who first turn into you on the weekends might not know you are a news station?

4. END THE ECHO CHAMBER

Seriously, don’t any of these hosts know more than 5 people? Every show, every day, has the exact same experts commenting. Each host has found a cadre of people who think like them along with one person who thinks differently but is easy to beat up. These are the people you see on their shows day after day. Enough of the same talking head scientist day in and day out telling me what all of the other scientists agree on. If they all agree on it can’t you find someone else to say the same thing the next day? The worst offender is Keith Olbermann who literally has the exact same people on every day without exception. However, I find it more annoying on FOX, where the guests on each show are often the hosts of other shows on the same network. The morning show has Beck, Beck has O’Reilly, O’Reilly has Geraldo, and Geraldo has someone from the morning show. It is one giant self-affirming circle jerk. The one exception to this rule, and outstandingly so, is Rachel Maddow. Not only does she mix up her guest list from day to day, she actually has …wait for it…opposing viewpoints. Not only that, but those opposing viewpoints are often those of the very people she held to account on her previous broadcast. Her coverage of the “astroturfing” of grassroots protests by the right has included live discussions with the heads of the very organizations she has accused of being behind it. Furthermore, these discussions have been exactly that – discussions. No talking over people, no turning off their mics if they start to disagree vehemently with her. Actual, real journalism folks.

5. DECIDE WHAT YOU ARE AND OWN IT.

Quick Quiz. Match the 24 hour news network with its slogans

Networks:
CNN, MSNBC, FOX

Slogans:
“We Report. You Decide”, “We’re Talking Politics”, “Fair and Balanced”, “The Most Trusted Name In News”

Answers:

CNN: “The Most Trusted Name In News”. Seriously? According to who? It is hard to think of a network that jumps to conclusions without facts quicker. The motto should be “Because if we can’t be right, we can still be first.” These are the people who started the stampede to ruin Richard Jewell’s life over the Atlanta Olympics Bombing and who do more speculation reporting than anyone else. How many times do they have an “eye in the sky” image with three or four experts just guessing at what is going on? On top of all of this you have Lou Dobbs, who struggles so hard to hide his blatant fear of all things “other” behind economic worries, all to no avail. The man’s show is one solid hour of hate. Finally, who exactly is it we are supposed to trust? Half of their coverage these days consists of reading emails and tweets from viewers. “Let’ see what DemonHunterX of Nebraska is saying on twitter”. No, let’s not. If I want to get my reporting from twitter I have a way to do that. It’s called twitter. Seriously, this got so out of hand during the Iranian election street protests that people were calling into CNN begging them to take down the live twitter feed because it could be used by the Iranian police to identify and round up protesters. It took them 5 minutes to start showing them, but over 90 minutes of protests to stop. Also, I don’t trust anyone who thinks they can make a valuable informational point via a pie chart spinning in their palm or “beaming in” a holographic will.i.am.

MSNBC: “We’re Talking Politics”. Well, this is a breath of fresh air. By not claiming to be “trusted” or “balanced” or even “news” I find myself trusting them most. The reason is the lack of pretense. All three networks have wandered far from the reservation when it comes to straight news coverage. At least MSNBC admits it. The irony is that when FAIR and Media Matters both take the time to fact check the three news networks, MSNBC is consistently the most factually accurate. You may not agree with their conclusions, but at least they start from an honest premise. Again, I have to tip my hat to The Rachel Maddow Show. This is, as far as I can see, the only news show that takes the time after showing a claim by a politician, left or right, to discuss if the statement itself is true or not. If you want to know the page and paragraph in the health care bills where a politician’s statement is proven or dis-proven then watch Rachel. She will show it to you right after showing the politician’s statement. No one else is doing this. The rest are all so caught up in process (how will the other side react to the statement and then how will the first side counter-react) that they forget to tell you if there is a discernible truth to be had. Unfortunately, you can also find the opposite extreme on MSNBC with Ed Schulz. Now here is a man I agree with 90% of the time but still can’t stand to watch. Why? He doesn’t make the argument. He simply attacks the person who said something he disagrees with and points out every reason that they are not to be trusted. Often this is all true, but it does nothing to address the issue. He simply kills the messenger. Walking the line perfectly between the two of them is Keith Olbermann. He methodically debunks the ridiculousness of a statement, and then he needlessly kills the messenger – or sometimes vice versa. Now if he could just get over his obsession with shooting down reporting by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Honestly, does anyone watching Keith Olbermann believe a word that comes out of the mouths of Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh? Keith, make better use of the time then reminding us every day that they are dangerous demagogues who can not be trusted and are potentially dangerous. We already know that. Seriously. Plus, it can’t be doing anything good for your blood pressure.

FOX: “We Report. You Decide” and “Fair and Balanced”. That loud banging sound and mumbling you hear is George Orwell pounding on his casket door and screaming “Let me the fuck out of here so I can ring Roger Ailes’ pudgy neck!” I would like to think that what I have written so far makes it clear that I have problems with all of the news channels, and the concept of 24 hour news itself. I hope that I have earned enough trust as an open, honest broker that you will not see it as a partisan attack when I say that FOX news lies its ass off 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They decide, then report. They decide what they want the audience to believe, then they report it as fact. I am talking about statements about how much health care will cost or what path it leads us down. I may disagree with their conclusions but the future is conjecture no matter who is predicting it. John Stewart pointed out the science behind Fox’s approach the other night, with examples, and it bears repeating here.

First, Fox’s few actual reporters cover an event in a straightforward manner, than wonder aloud how others will react to it. This is followed by 12 – 18 hours of Fox commentators reacting to it, which is followed in the next news cycle with those reactions being reported as news (“Many experts are saying….”). This leads to the followers of those commentators, and the politicians on the right who want to expand on the narrative, chiming in so that 24 hours later the news arm is reporting the wide spread reaction of various organizations to the initial event – again without noting that these organizations get their talking points from the very commentators they referred to the day before as “experts”. Even Fox itself practically admitted it last week. When asked about Obama’s charges that they were not news, Rupert Murdoch responded by differentiating between the news shows and commentary during the week. By his own count, there is 5 hours of news broadcast each day. The other 19 hours is commentary. Also, the 5 hours of news is during the least watched periods of television overall, not just for Fox but on TV.

If that is how you want to play it FOX, no problem. Just be honest about it. Drop the “fair and balanced/we report you decide” crap. But they can’t. They spend so much of their time on the air spreading outright lies (Death Panels? Seriously, you want us to believe that someone seeking re-election some day is supporting a panel that can choose to kill grandma?), that they can’t drop the slogans. Dropping the slogans would be honest. But they are Fox. They can’t be honest. So they can’t drop the slogans that say they are honest. OK, now I am making my own head hurt again.

I think I’ll lie down now and turn the TV on. Maybe there is something on C-SPAN.

November 7, 2009 Posted by David Norman | Musings, The Media | , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Condition Critical (Thinking) Part II – The News Media

In my last post I discussed how the deterioration of critical thinking in our school curricula has contributed to our becoming a nation of morons. This may explain the roots of our “moron-ness”, but fails to look at how it is reinforced in our adult life. How does one go from a child lacking the skills to form an opinion to an adult with an unwavering opinion?

The first and most obvious factor is social self-identification. The ideas that our heads are filled with by others when we are children greatly influence who we become as adults. Without the ability to think critically we are much more likely to absorb the ideas of those we admire and reject the ideas of those we dislike. The more we want to be like someone or believe that someone to be like us, the more likely we are to accept their world view as our own.

Still, we are bombarded by information 24/7/365, aren’t we? We live in the age of information, don’t we? Well… yes and no.

Yes, there is more information readily available to more people in more places and forms than at any time in human history. Yet we do not live in an age of information so much as we live in an age of content (not to be confused with an age of contentment – though hope springs eternal). Without critical thinking skills, people do not seek information as much as they choose content. Thanks to the explosion of the internet over the last 20 years, and social networking over the last 5 years, the existence of places to pitch your online tent where everyone thinks and feels as you do is guaranteed.

Fortunately for all of us (or most of us at least) we have a natural curiosity to know what is happening now, today, this very moment, that may effect our ability to live out our world view.

Enter The News Media (If I were a conservative I probably would say “Enter the News Media, Stage Left”).

Did you know that Charles “only call me Charlie in the morning” Gibson is retiring? Do you know who is replacing him? Here’s an easy one – do you know which network he anchors?*

Don’t worry if you answered “no” to all of the above. Network news is no longer that relevant anyway. Wait… On second thought, worry a lot.

Between Internet direct access to the wire services, internationally read blogs, Twitter and facebook – just to name a few – you already know everything that happened today. And if you don’t you can always turn 24/7 to the three wise men: CNN, MSNBC and FOX News.

Herein lies the problem. Before the advent of the 24 hour news cycle critical thinking was essentially organic. The environment forced it. Three channels had 30 minutes each to tell you what happened in the world that day. This meant a staff of producers and editors who had to shift through the ton of info coming to them from local, national and international newspapers, wire services (so called because they distributed information on a way not that far removed from telegraph) and other TV broadcasts, as well as there own sources and journalists.

This required serious (and rapid) decision making. What do people need to know?  what is or isn’t important? How do we communicate the most amount of information with the least words?  Of course, they could always do a “special report” if there was breaking news that demanded immediate attention, but evn that was frowned upon as it meant eating into revenue with news – a loss leader that functioned more as a public service then as a way to sell ads. Newspapers competed with this by taking advantage of their additional space to provide in depth analysis and special feature reporting, so that you could get all the details you needed to decide what you thought and felt about the information.

Then CNN came along, and the whole process was thrown on its rear end. They started with traditional news hours, starting over at the beginning each and every hour.  However, they had to face a new challenge – as a network that existed only for news, they could not be a loss leader for something else. They had to make money, and that meant original programming. You couldn’t get by on one guy each who watched at 6:00 or 7:00 or 8:00. You needed all three watching at 6:00 AND 7:00 AND 8:00. But what if there wasn’t enough news of interest to fill three hours?

You stretched, you found as many different people with as many different takes on one item and then you had them talk about it incessantly. Since the information could often be communicated in 15 – 30 minutes they had to fill the other two hours with analysis. What does yada yada mean to the Democrats, to the Republicans, to your checkbook? This seemed helpful at first, but as the time required to analyze a thing grew to be so much longer than the time required to identify that thing, and as who analyzed that thing started to drive ratings it all went to hell. The Mass Media, and in turn the people who watched it – already weakened by a lack of critical thinking skills – became obsessed with process.

A perfect recent example is the Joe Wilson incident during the President’s speech to a joint session of Congress. From the moment the speech was over the questions began: Who said that? Why did he feel that way? Had anyone ever done that before? How would the Democrats react? Would discussion of censure derail the health care debate? Is Joe Wilson a racist?

Do you see what is missing here?  Come on, put your critical thinking caps on.  I’ll wait….

….

….

DID THE PRESIDENT LIE? Does or doesn’t the bill (or bills, depending on how you look at it) allow for federal dollars to go for paying illegal immigrant health care?** Did Joe Wilson lie when he called the President a liar?  For extra credit (ok – not for extra credit – but because you really have to) tell us where the answer to that question comes from. Once you know the answer to that question, THEN you can start to form your own opinion on why he said it. They can report on his biography and you can make up your mind. You can also hear the plusses and cons of such a provision in the bill from a purely statistical point of view and decide how that fits into your own moral framework.

But that does not happen. You see, the ratings started to come in, and the news channel (CNN) started to realize that certain personalities and opinions drew higher ratings. Now instead of helping the people figure out what they want it became about giving the people what they already want. Why educate 50 people when you can reinforce the already held beliefs of 100?

For that matter, if you have the money and know what you want people to believe, why not hire the talent that will communicate that constantly, over and over again, in a format that allows the uninformed to think they are being given facts when they are really just receiving positive reinforcement of already held views.  Why not use this to move forward a larger agenda? Why should the news be about information when it can be about control?  ENTER FOX NEWS, STAGE RIGHT.

Now the news cycle and the Republican spin cycle were one and the same. As shown in the Robert Greenwald documentary Outfoxed, a whole new process was born. Each morning the republicans (and the democrats for that matter) would chose a story of the day. The thing that they wanted to try to concentrate on and get in front of the people.

The democrats did this through press conferences and public appearances, as well as giving interviews. The republicans just emailed it to Roger Ailes, president of Fox News. Literally. Ailes would then prepare a “Message Of The Day”, distributed to all producers, writers, and online personalities, stating what point the channel wanted to try to get across to the American People that day. Not only was this always based on the party talking points, it often just cut and pasted them verbatim from the email to the memo.  By the way, did I mention that they did all of this under the banners of “Fair and Balanced” and “We Report, You Decide”. Those already inclined to believe whatever the right told them now had a home, a place where they could receive non-stop propoganda while convincing themselves they were receiving fair and balanced information and then deciding for themselves. It was the ultimate self-reliant delusion.

If not for the dependence on ratings this could have been harmless. So what if the right has their own mouthpiece? What’s the harm if the people watching are inclined to believe what they are hearing anyway? And the answer is none – no harm at all – as long as they are looking at the facts and just presenting their take on it.  But what happens when they stop presenting the facts?  What happens once they have built their army of viewers who believe everything they say and start lying to them?

Welcome to America today – an America when many on the right believe that the Clintons ran a coke smuggling operation out of Arkansas and had Vince Foster killed. An America that believes that a man who dodged his Air Force Reserve duty is more qualified to be Commander In Chief then a man who won a Bronze Star for running INTO enemy fire to retrieve an injured soldier. An America that believes that the only way to guarantee a fair election is to stop counting ballots. An America that believes the President has a plan to kill old people when they become too expensive to take care of, and isn’t even trying to hide it. An America that believes that the President isn’t an American. A land gone mad – a country of morons.

“But wait!” scream my conservative friends***, “You have MSNBC! It’s the same thing!”

Ummmmmm, no. Not even close.

First:  Unlike CNN and Fox, MSNBC does not brand itself as News. While Fox is “Fair and Balanced” and CNN is “The Most Trusted Name in News”, MSNBC is “The Place For Politics.”

Second: While MSNBC hosts are clearly opinionated, they use clear sourcing and allow opposing view points. hey may discuss an issue with an Op-Ed Columnist, but they will have that columnist cite their sources rather than treat them as a source. They will give airtime to opposing view points – especially Rachel Maddow, who often has on guests that disagree with her – including regular commentary from Pat Buchanan.

Third: They correct themselves.  On several occassions I have heard Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann (Yes, I admit it, a bit of a blowhard) correct themselves if they got a fact wrong the previous day, or even before the commercial break.  I have even seen Olbermann and Matthews (GASP!) change their minds on an issue after speaking with a guest. Compare that to Bill O’Reilly, who claimed the day after Dr. Tiller’s death that he stood by all of his “reporting” and that he had “never said anything about Dr. Tiller that was not true”.  Sorry Bill, but for the record not once did Dr. Tiller perform a third trimester abortion because the woman was depressed that day or didn’t like that she couldn’t fit into her shoes – both things he had stated as fact.

Fourth: They have a conservative host – Joe Scarborough.

So where does this leave us? The Republicans play more and more to their base, which as they lose the independents becomes more and more made up of the radical right, galvanized by right-wing radio. In order to hold on to these people they become more and more extreme in their speech, and in what they disseminate on Fox. Critical Thinking? Please – that only works against them. They report what you’ll decide.

But wait, don’t slit your wrists yet, there is good news. Very good news.

THEY ARE THE MINORITY. THERE ARE MORE OF US. We just need to get ourselves together.

How?  I’ll posit my humble suggestions about how we turn the very people who oppose the change this country needs into critical thinkers who support it in my next post. Stay tuned.

* Yes, he is. Diane Sawyer. ABC.

** No, he did not. Section 274 of HR3200 specifically states that no federal funds can be used for the insurance or treatment of illegal aliens. That was already in the bill before Joe Wilson opened his mouth.

***Yes, I do have conservative friends. We talk about TV and the weather a lot.

September 16, 2009 Posted by David Norman | American, The Media | | 4 Comments