I hardly watch television news anymore except when there is something important and live happening. An insider explains why.
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It's no secret that mainstream TV news has fallen behind when it comes to providing viewers with raw, timely, and relevant coverage of current events. Few people who stay updated online throughout the day sit down to watch the five or ten 'o clock evening news?and why should they? To hear the harrowing tale of a nursing home cat or how, during the holiday season, the airports were just absolutely packed? TV news shows do manage to touch on current events, but the real reporting is scattered between fluff pieces. It's just one of the many things wrong with network TV, according to former Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry in a lengthy piece at the MIT Technology Review.
Forget facts, let's get emo
The entire piece is certainly worth a read (and thanks to BoingBoing for tipping us off to it), but Hockenberry touches on some very important lessons he learned while working for NBC that are worth touching on here. His general theme is that NBC?and likely other networks like it?is far too focused on generating an audience at the cost of decent content. Programming regularly focused around an "emotional center"?a story that could pull at the heartstrings of the American public?rather than trying to communicate unique or in-depth news stories.
For example, Hockenberry points out that just after September 11, he had proposed a series of stories about al-Qaeda and its significance?a relatively new topic at the time for the American public. But then-new NBC head Jeff Zucker had a better idea: a reality series like Cops, but based on the heroic efforts of firefighters. "He told Corvo he could make room in the prime-time lineup for firefighters, but then smiled at me and said, in effect, that he had no time for any subtitled interviews with jihadists raging about Palestine," wrote Hockenberry. The firefighter documentary series was eventually dropped after NBC discovered that very little goes on at fire houses most of the time.
But the "emotional center" of the news didn't just revolve around September 11. Another time, Hockenberry was told that a story about a former member of the Weather Underground getting out of prison couldn't run unless it could somehow be tied into the now-cancelled sitcom American Dreams. Dateline's priority at the time was a series on the late Princess Diana's unhappy marriage to Prince Charles. "Diana's emotional center was coveted in prime time even though its relevance to anything going on in 2003 was surely out on some voyeuristic fringe," said Hockenberry.
...and don't forget shock value!
The examples go on. Hockenberry was told that raw footage of prison guards in Connecticut merely suffocating a mentally ill prisoner to death was not interesting enough. "n an era when most of our audience has seen the Rodney King video, where you can clearly see someone being beaten, this just doesn't hold up," a producer told him. And as any (former or current) Dateline watcher knows, the network struck gold with both emotion and shock value when it launched its To Catch a Predator series?fascinating in the same, embarrassing way that American Idol auditions are fascinating, but not communicating much except that there are predators on the Internet. News at 11.
Hockenberry's piece is a much more serious reminder of what comedian John Stewart brought to our attention in the fall of 2004, when he appeared on CNN's Crossfire and questioned Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala over why they (and other news shows) were choosing to "hurt America" with their theatrics and nonexistent reporting. That clip and a transcript of the encounter spread like wildfire, showing that the American public was just as frustrated as Stewart was with the state of the media.
In fact, this sentiment was corroborated by a study by Indiana University in 2006 showing that John Stewart's "fake news" show on Comedy Central, The Daily Show, was as substantive as "real news." Not only that, but its viewers were more informed about current events than the viewers of traditional news networks, too.
Hockenberry paints network TV as increasingly obscure, obsessed with irrelevant and sometimes even inane news that will bring in a quick advertising buck. And while the advertisers are trying to stay current by looking to the Internet and find new ways to interact with viewers, networks seem to be moving backwards by running safe, non-edgy stories that can guarantee fully-booked ad spots and an emotionally-driven audience. Meanwhile, Hockenberry argues that technology is helping to reform journalism by "freeing communication" and offering us a fresher, more honest view of the world.
It's worth pointing out, however, that this phenomenon isn't limited to network TV. You see safe, substance-less stories running in newspapers all the time, and even faster-moving, "edgier" online publications have been guilty of falling into the same trap. More stories = more advertising = more viewers; screw the quality content! But as long as the public has a choice in where its news is coming from, we continue to have hope that journalism will evolve or die, both online and off.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ar...r-dateliner-talks.html
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19845/
------------------------------------------------------
It's no secret that mainstream TV news has fallen behind when it comes to providing viewers with raw, timely, and relevant coverage of current events. Few people who stay updated online throughout the day sit down to watch the five or ten 'o clock evening news?and why should they? To hear the harrowing tale of a nursing home cat or how, during the holiday season, the airports were just absolutely packed? TV news shows do manage to touch on current events, but the real reporting is scattered between fluff pieces. It's just one of the many things wrong with network TV, according to former Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry in a lengthy piece at the MIT Technology Review.
Forget facts, let's get emo
The entire piece is certainly worth a read (and thanks to BoingBoing for tipping us off to it), but Hockenberry touches on some very important lessons he learned while working for NBC that are worth touching on here. His general theme is that NBC?and likely other networks like it?is far too focused on generating an audience at the cost of decent content. Programming regularly focused around an "emotional center"?a story that could pull at the heartstrings of the American public?rather than trying to communicate unique or in-depth news stories.
For example, Hockenberry points out that just after September 11, he had proposed a series of stories about al-Qaeda and its significance?a relatively new topic at the time for the American public. But then-new NBC head Jeff Zucker had a better idea: a reality series like Cops, but based on the heroic efforts of firefighters. "He told Corvo he could make room in the prime-time lineup for firefighters, but then smiled at me and said, in effect, that he had no time for any subtitled interviews with jihadists raging about Palestine," wrote Hockenberry. The firefighter documentary series was eventually dropped after NBC discovered that very little goes on at fire houses most of the time.
But the "emotional center" of the news didn't just revolve around September 11. Another time, Hockenberry was told that a story about a former member of the Weather Underground getting out of prison couldn't run unless it could somehow be tied into the now-cancelled sitcom American Dreams. Dateline's priority at the time was a series on the late Princess Diana's unhappy marriage to Prince Charles. "Diana's emotional center was coveted in prime time even though its relevance to anything going on in 2003 was surely out on some voyeuristic fringe," said Hockenberry.
...and don't forget shock value!
The examples go on. Hockenberry was told that raw footage of prison guards in Connecticut merely suffocating a mentally ill prisoner to death was not interesting enough. "n an era when most of our audience has seen the Rodney King video, where you can clearly see someone being beaten, this just doesn't hold up," a producer told him. And as any (former or current) Dateline watcher knows, the network struck gold with both emotion and shock value when it launched its To Catch a Predator series?fascinating in the same, embarrassing way that American Idol auditions are fascinating, but not communicating much except that there are predators on the Internet. News at 11.
Hockenberry's piece is a much more serious reminder of what comedian John Stewart brought to our attention in the fall of 2004, when he appeared on CNN's Crossfire and questioned Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala over why they (and other news shows) were choosing to "hurt America" with their theatrics and nonexistent reporting. That clip and a transcript of the encounter spread like wildfire, showing that the American public was just as frustrated as Stewart was with the state of the media.
In fact, this sentiment was corroborated by a study by Indiana University in 2006 showing that John Stewart's "fake news" show on Comedy Central, The Daily Show, was as substantive as "real news." Not only that, but its viewers were more informed about current events than the viewers of traditional news networks, too.
Hockenberry paints network TV as increasingly obscure, obsessed with irrelevant and sometimes even inane news that will bring in a quick advertising buck. And while the advertisers are trying to stay current by looking to the Internet and find new ways to interact with viewers, networks seem to be moving backwards by running safe, non-edgy stories that can guarantee fully-booked ad spots and an emotionally-driven audience. Meanwhile, Hockenberry argues that technology is helping to reform journalism by "freeing communication" and offering us a fresher, more honest view of the world.
It's worth pointing out, however, that this phenomenon isn't limited to network TV. You see safe, substance-less stories running in newspapers all the time, and even faster-moving, "edgier" online publications have been guilty of falling into the same trap. More stories = more advertising = more viewers; screw the quality content! But as long as the public has a choice in where its news is coming from, we continue to have hope that journalism will evolve or die, both online and off.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ar...r-dateliner-talks.html
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19845/
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