TELEVISION NEWS: Information or Infotainment?

AuthorMedved, Michael

A 1999 GALLUP POLL revealed that Hustler publisher Larry Flynt enjoys a higher personal approval rating (42%) than House Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde (30%). I can't think of a better or more disturbing example of the tremendous power of television news.

Newscasters and correspondents seldom, if ever, identify Flynt as a hard-core pornographer. Instead, he is politely referred to as a "controversial defender" of the First Amendment and freedom of the press. Even when the White House brazenly misidentified Flynt (one of Pres. Clinton's staunchest allies) as a publisher of a "news magazine," it merely provoked titters, rather than indignation. Is this because TV news anchors Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings consider Flynt a colleague? Even if Flynt owned a gold-plated press pass and a trunk full of Pulitzer Prizes, I doubt that they would want to be professionally associated with a man who was dubbed "Pornographer General" by Wes Pruden of the Washington Times.

Nevertheless, the line between news and entertainment has been obliterated in America's television-obsessed culture. Flynt is not just a sick sideshow figure anymore--he is a newsmaker, and he is not the only one to benefit from this unfortunate situation. In 1997, for example, Geraldo Rivera struck a $40,000,000 deal with NBC News. He wanted to shed his image as a sleazy talk show host, and the network wanted a top celebrity for its news division.

It isn't just that the news tilts toward entertainment and entertainers. Entertainment is the news. When the hit television series "Seinfeld" went off the air in 1998, all the major networks ran lengthy stories. The Hollywood press conference that announces the nominees for the Academy Awards receives coverage comparable to the president's "State of the Union" address. The box office tallies of the sequel to "Jurassic Park" and the first episode of the prequel to the "Star Wars" trilogy become major network news stories.

In this day and age of giant conglomerates, a number of networks are owned and operated by film studios, but there is no grand media conspiracy. There are plenty of independent news sources that provide competition. So who is responsible for the triumph of "infotainment" over information? It is us, the consumers of the news. We allow television to be our main source of news, and this leads to three critical distortions in our lives: self-pity, a shortened attention span, and superficiality and subjectivity.

Self-pity...

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