24-Hour TV News: Enemy of Democracy?

In the United States, the advent of the Cable News Network in 1980 delivered on the promise of a newly born information age to provide round-the-clock television news coverage. We have in 2008, by my count, four major full-time news networks: CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and BBC. There are a good number of other heavy-hitting news outlets like ABC and CBS that do not have 24-hour coverage. And then we have some that are more narrowly oriented such as C-SPAN.

We have so much to be grateful for with the miracle of technology in this widespread availability of news reporting, especially those of us in the “news junkie” demographic. But is there, as the title of this entry suggests, a danger inherent in the nature of such constant and unceasing information inundation? [Note: The construction of the title, with the second clause ending with interrogatory punctuation, is an homage to the many many CNN headlines I have observed over the years; start looking for this type of preemptive conflictization and you will find it everywhere in TV news.]

One of my favorite things on television is the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Although I disagree with the way they go after some of their targets, particularly the utter disrespect for almost every religious belief in existence, I feel that the writers of this show are fair in that they attack ridiculous people and things, regardless of where on the political spectrum they lie (or tell the truth…). I was watching the other night a segment on the Daily Show on the media’s coverage of some reportedly tense confrontations between politico-campaigners and the press (for the segment, click here). First shown were reports on all the major news networks—complete with clips from the newscasts of each—describing an exchange between Mitt Romney and a reporter who repeatedly asks him about the Washington lobbyists who are “running his campaign.” Words like “eruption” and “flared up” were tossed about quite liberally by the talking heads. Then the Daily Show did something quite remarkable: they played the entire encounter between Romney and the reporter. Jon Stewart made hay of the grossly exaggerated coverage of the mildly angry reaction of Romney, and I laughed. The follow-up was similar, only replacing one obnoxious reporter for another and Bill Clinton for Mitt Romney. When played in full, the video revealed a rather mild-mannered and diplomatic President Clinton saying “shame on you” to reporters after being unfairly harassed. And the pundits said he was “vitriolic” and “lashed out” at the poor defenseless press! I appreciated the Daily Show for once again putting into perspective the divisive, inaccurate, and confrontational comportment of TV news. [For the very funny follow-on segment, click here. For further information on the war between common sense and mass media, please see Jon Stewart’s legendary 2004 appearance on CNN’s Crossfire; the program was cancelled a short while later, in large part due to Stewart’s eloquent denunciations of the show’s hosts.]

The fact is, television news networks are not in the public service announcement line of work. They are in business! And, like the yellow journalists and muckrakers of old, they know what kind of product sells. They are so keenly aware of how to make a profit from news television that they are willing to compromise objective portrayal of reality. The examples given above are perfect in their illustration. No one at MSNBC benefits by downplaying Mitt Romney’s slightly heated rebuke of a “persistent” reporter. No one at CNN stands anything to gain by making Bill Clinton appear as decent as he actually was in his recent encounter with hostile reporters. What the people at MSNBC and CNN and FOX get from sensationalizing these sound-bytes is a Nielsen rating that exceeds that of their competitors. And yes, they feel it’s more important for you to listen to their commentary on a clip of video than for you to see the whole thing and judge for yourself. Any viewer that wanted to see the whole thing could just go to the internet, right? The value-add of these news networks is, quite literally, the conflict and drama that they can construct from reality, not the portrayal of reality itself.

Two more anecdotes will show how these tendencies of our dear, TV news producer friends are not just something to be aware of when evaluating their coverage. Their methods are actually harmful to the United States and democracy write large.

#1: Opinion force-feeding. A truly democratic society must have a citizenry who think for themselves. People who understand the issues and vote based on the positions of candidates and parties are the core of a functioning democracy or representative republic. [I have a whole separate diatribe on the failures of the two-party system in America that perhaps I will share at another time.] However, TV news, and particularly those networks that have to fill every minute of every day with something, has been telling Americans what to think. In their lust for conflict-induced ratings, newsmen play right into the hands of politicians who wish to shore up their bases with divisive tactics (see the Crossfire clip above). What about being spoon-fed opinions of others (also known as polls)? A presidential debate doesn’t even make it to a commercial break before the sponsoring network displays polls on who is winning on its scrolling marquee. The legions of pundits start in as soon as the debate ends, and “spin alley” interviews with politicians and their minions abound. I find every aspect of these demagogic, post-game rituals utterly repulsive. I believe viewers deserve to not be told how they will respond, and they deserve time to respond, analyze arguments and performances, and formulate opinions on their own. And yet I watch. I choose to watch on TV instead of on the Web. So maybe I am to blame here. My next argument is better.

#2: Economic and other types of self-fulfilling prophecies. “Fed Rate Cuts: Recession Averted?” This headline from last week is one of literally thousands like it that appear every hour, on the hour on all the major news networks. What’s wrong with reporting on economic news? Nothing. What’s wrong with reporting on economic speculation? Lots. The news would be that a recession is actually going on, but that is certainly something beyond the scope of a couple consecutive bad days at the stock market and a gut feeling that we surely must have a recession sooner or later. One thing that everyone should understand right now about recessions: they are the prime example in the world of self-fulfilling prophecies. In a country where two-thirds of the economy is consumer-driven (as Mitt Romney pointed out in Thursday’s debate), the confidence of consumers is everything when it comes to the economy. So what happens when CNN issues a recession alert at noon, two, four, five, six, and seven o’clock on Tuesday afternoon? Consumers see the word “recession” appear on their TV screens 6 times before supper, and come Wednesday morning are in no mood to spend. Save becomes the watchword. Pull out all your investments and stop spending. This mentality is the number one cause of recessions in the United States, and it is fueled, if not created, by the mass media. I don’t want to single out CNN on this one; all are equally guilty, including local news stations that sensationalize stock losses in their evening report. But the full-time news programming of CNN and others like it exacerbate the problem greatly. And they do it because it is good for ratings.

I have not made any personal attacks on those in the news media, because that is not what this post is about. I would like to say now that I believe there are sincere reporters with journalistic integrity at every network. I hope that their efforts at objectivity may prevail over those simply out for lucre.

My bottom line: We as citizens must demand more from our video journalists. Let’s support those with integrity and denounce those without. The end.