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News You Can Lose

By Susan J. Douglas

Brace yourselves. The real presidential campaign — the kind the news media have forced us to get used to — has begun, with the twin uproars over remarks by Geraldine Ferraro and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as the inaugural moments. The way the talking heads on CNN and Fox flogged these stories made you want to outlaw 24-hour cable news.… return to article

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    “Many are starting to see the Internet as the best place to get more well-rounded coverage.”

    Well yes, ‘well-rounded’ in the sense that there are many more points of view to access. I generally go to Google’s news page, mainly because of the variety available. But there’s a lot of nonsense on the internet too, and you have to have a very discerning eye and a critical turn of mind to have a hope in hell of not being just as much misled or partially informed we risk from only going to 24-hr cable news or the local TV station. And, it can be a bit time consuming, not conducive to sitting still for a passively consumed 30-minute dose.

    Also, there’s a risk that we’ll simply reify the biases we already have by selecting news sources that go along with what we already think, ‘consumer demand’ possibly trumping informed understanding.

    The great benefit is that by having many more sources of news, you’re not confined to what a few news directors, at the behest of their lords in the boardrooms, are willing and able to broadcast. This benefit overcomes the still-salient reality of having to wade through the junk that is all over the web and select what is worth attending to. But of course you have to be willing to look outside your comfort zone sources. There are a lot on the web, way fewer on the tube.

    “As we live through the challenges posed to conventional journalism by the ferment online, will we see broadcast news finally appreciate what their core audience wants?”

    I fear that the real ‘core audience’ is probably content to be distracted by celebrity trivia and news-analysis-by-soundbite. I mean the big cable audience, at large. ‘What they want’ is a phrasing I don’t like much, because there’s an implication that the ‘consumer demand’ I noted above ought to drive the decisions of the ‘suppliers’ of news. I’m very discontent with the approach to news that ends up commodotizing information, going after market share above all as a mechanism to gain more income, which is of course what the conglomerates who now own and operate virtually all of the major news networks (that aren’t govt-run, e.g. Xinhua or, partly, BBC) are most concerned with. Naturally, since their larger shareholders demand that emphasis.

    If open access to information that is clearly phrased, highly informative, and reduced-in-bias (yes, a tall order, but doable) is an essential ingredient of the proper role of the news media in a democratic republic, and I submit that it is, then the philosophy behind broadcast news as offered by the mainstream, boardroom-controlled media ought to change.

    Like the author says, we can dream. But hopelessness is self-defeat, an unworthy way of thinking.

    Short of that, we’ll turn to the internet and be forced to sift out the news sources that provide that access, most likely as a function of sampling many different purveyors and critically evaluating each.

    Better than relying on what Brit Hume or Anderson Cooper will be allowed to say. Not perfect, but at least potentially better.

    Philippines Posted by Kuya on Apr 24, 2008 at 9:20 PM

    Did the Pew study say which news sources are perceived as untrustworthy? 

    Perhaps the shysters in FOX and CNN news don’t care because their contribution is just one more drop in a really big bucket.

    I watched enough of Fox News “Strategy Room” this weekend. Two of the commentators and the host referred to the “double digit” defeat suffered by Obama in Pennsylvania.

    But they didn’t bother to look at the complete returns. The margin was 9.2%. 

    Perhaps FOX and CNN don’t care because their viewers have an emotional attachment to their shows that is more important than being trustworthy.  I think the best analogy is professional wrestling.

    United States Posted by tbdhappiness on Apr 28, 2008 at 3:10 PM
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