For a week at the beginning of the semester, my television was broken. Until the OIT staff magically repaired it one afternoon while I was in class, I was completely out of touch. Gone were my morning updates with Matt and Katie, evenings sessions of Crossfire and late nights with the WB news team. After a summer spent as an intern playing Hardball with Chris Matthews at MSNBC, one would think I would know better than to rely on television for my news, but alas, I had fallen into the trap of every time-strapped 21st century information seeker. I had forgotten that television news is, by and large, a contradiction in terms.
The problems with news broadcasts are evident no matter what time of day one tunes in. Local broadcasts are predictable: anchors will do ten stories on street fairs and burglaries before they even mention City Hall. Network news producers are careful to offset any reference to Capitol Hill or the President with pieces on personal finance or the latest outbreak of West Nile Virus. But the ultimate in current events inanity is the cable news industry, where the ethos of fluff and sound bites that has come to define television journalism is on display twenty-four hours a day.
Cable news' troubles begin with the stories they choose. Over the summer, one couldn't flip through the channels without seeing a picture of Elizabeth Smart. The Smart story was a tragic one, but it was hardly as newsworthy as it was made out to be. As an intern, I watched producers reject stories about international women's rights, federal civil liberties mandates, and American political maneuvering, in favor of reports that nothing new had turned up in the Smart case. When they tired of reporting the lack of news, the creative geniuses at the three cable networks found new kidnappings to cover. Each offset this coverage in its own way. MSNBC is a particular fan of showing footage from long, dangerous car chases. Fox News, never able to turn down a story that makes fun of Democrats, once preempted a major White House press conference to air a piece about actors from The West Wing campaigning for Janet Reno. The judgment calls are questionable at best.
Even when they report on the important stories, television journalists don't always do it right. One of my tasks at Hardball was to identify sound bites we could use in each evening's broadcast. The goal was not necessarily to capture the essence of someone's remarks but to find a quote that was inflammatory, provocative, or off the wall. Similarly, guests for primetime discussions shows, from Hardball to The O'Reilly Factor, are selected not necessarily for their level of expertise or insight but because they are entertaining to watch. Anyone who has ever seen cable news favorite Ann Coulter, the conservative bombshell who is better at making unhappy faces and yelling at anchors than providing real analysis, can attest to this phenomenon.
The people who make television news are not evil or stupid. They are caught in the chasm between journalism and entertainment. As they struggle to fill the void between the two, we can make use of their work if we watch as savvy viewers. Cable news, for example, allows us to catch up on current events quickly, but we should read newspapers as well, seeking out the stories about international relations and domestic affairs that the networks maintain Americans could care less about. After all, most television producers get their ideas from print journalism, and the level of depth in any New York Times or Wall Street Journal article goes far beyond that of a minute long television hit. In addition, we have to be aware of the biases of our news outlets. For every kidnapping of a wealthy white child reported on the airwaves, there are dozens more that revolve around families with less picturesque snapshots. Similarly, we should try and garner what logic and useful commentary there is from the yelling matches of Hardball and Crossfire. By understanding the leanings and affiliations of talking heads, and trying to listen to the ideas beyond the smack down political rhetoric, we can actually gain some insight from the news being offered.
Most of us are guilty of not being as informed as we should be, as students, voters and citizens. With television news in the state that it is, we can hardly be blamed for our failings. Changing the industry ought to be a long-term goal of the American viewing populace, but in the meantime, we can become more informed about the world around us by understanding the failings of what we see on the airwaves and by, occasionally, turning off the tv. Katherine Reilly is a Short Hills, N.J. She can be reached at kcreilly@princeton.edu.
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