Good news for good news: excellent television journalism benefits networks and our society.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 01 May 2003
• Author: Leger, Robert

Newton Minow told broadcasters in 1961 that more news and public affairs programming would help erase the vast wasteland of television. (1) He was wrong. Forty years later, a television viewer can watch what is labeled as "news" all day, yet the wasteland has not disappeared. It may be greener, but it is no rainforest.

Let us suppose someone today took Minow's challenge to watch TV from sign-on to sign-off--or dawn to midnight--and choose to watch only news. His day could start with the networks' morning shows, where an interview by a cable-TV celebrity with a model is allotted twice as much time as a news roundup, and where pictures of a dog catching a man at the end of a police chase get more attention than video from a suicide bombing in Israel.

In disgust, our viewer could switch to a cable news channel to get the headlines of the important news of the day. He might see a candidate debate or a presidential news conference. But he also would be subjected to talking heads shouting at each other, their value more entertainment than public affairs. Chances are high he would encounter live coverage of a tragic event in a distant city--a child abduction, a shark attack--and the coverage would be so wall-to-wall he would be tempted to think this happened everyday, everywhere.

In the evening, he could turn to a network primetime news magazine in hopes of seeing a story with the potential to change government or industry...