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Jewish World Review
March 28, 2013/ 17 Nissan, 5773
TV news can give you the blues
By
Jay Ambrose
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Last July, a Gallup poll said 21 percent of American adults had a "great deal" of confidence in TV news, which is odd even though it is a minority, seeing as how there is so little really, truly to have confidence in.
The wisdom of the majority in not much trusting TV is surely more justified. Yes, there is some splendid reporting. And even if liberal bias still dominates, there's Fox News, born in the '90s, now outrunning its cable competitors in ratings and affording the public interpretations and subject choices decidedly less dependent on neo-socialist, big-government amiability.
It does not follow that the citizenry had as much opportunity for true enlightenment in this most recent presidential election as it should have or that we aren't witnessing a continuing tumble in much that calls itself news.
The respected Pew Research Center recently completed a study comparing TV news in 2007 to 2012. It found that local TV news -- infrequently much more than sensational snippets in my watching experience -- is devoting increasing time to traffic, weather and sports. That may be useful and fun, though it is not exactly what James Madison meant when he said the people must be armed with knowledge if they are to keep government from becoming a farce and a tragedy.
To be sure, other news is there in itsy-bitsy bites, but young people aren't watching and it's getting ever harder for the stations to pull in the dollars necessary for oomph down the road, the study says.
The national networks? Their viewership is half what it was 30 years ago and the future doesn't look exactly like fireworks and shouts of hallelujah. Nevertheless, the number of nightly viewers (some 22 million) is about seven times larger than cable news viewers (roughly 3 million). The content has stayed relatively unruffled, just little things changing, such as ABC putting more emphasis on lifestyle stories.
Where things get more interesting is with cable news. Commentary is getting to be a bigger deal than before, as straight news coverage is relying more on interviews than live stories. Fox has kept its format close to what it was -- 55 percent commentary to 45 percent news. CNN, coming in last in the ratings, still has more news than commentary, 54 percent to 46 percent.
Then we get to MSNBC, where news accounts for just 15 percent of airtime and the liberal commentary is 85 percent.
I am scarcely against opinion as part of a news package or even, in some specialized outlets, the main deal, but what you get on MSNBC is a misleading pretense of something informative and helpful when it's too often closer to zaniness and vitriol. Consider, for instance, commentator Chris Matthews branding ideas he dislikes as racist less as a consequence of considered reflection than of the anti-conservative, ad hominem reflex of a certain breed of ideologue.
Someone who points this out is David Freddoso, a Washington Examiner reporter and author of "Spin Masters: How the Media Ignored the Real News and Helped Reelect Barack Obama." In an online interview, he summed up how the nutsy stuff -- the nonexistent war on women, Mitt Romney's high school pranks and such -- got more serious attention in campaign coverage than any number of truly meaningful issues affecting the lives of one and all.
The networks focus far more on news than commentary, but the liberal bias never stops barking. Some of the earliest documentation was in a 1980 book -- "The Media Elite" -- that showed how just 17 percent of journalists at top newspapers, magazines and the TV networks saw themselves as conservative. More recently, the book "Left Turn," by social scientist Tim Groseclose, convincingly demonstrates that the bias in media generally still affects content big time.
What began to afford more balance on TV (in addition to the generally commendable work on PBS NewsHour) was the start of Fox, which does a pretty good job in straight news reporting and provides antidote conservatism in much, if far from all, of its commentary. Liberal critics never cease banging it on the head, but despite varied, unmistakable flaws, it represents something we need more of.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
03/20/13: We're upside down and debt crash is coming
03/13/13: Stock market is downright perky. Blame the corporations
03/06/13: Bloomberg rivals Carrie Nation
02/27/13: The Wily One is proving in polls that it's no toughie to fool lots of people most of the time
02/20/13: On Obama, swans, goulash and invisibility
02/13/13: Drones and hypocrisy
01/30/13: The Nixonian Obama
01/23/13: Is Obama making JFK-style mistakes?
01/02/13: Kerry nomination emblematic of woes coming
12/26/12: Hollywood beats Harvard in history?
12/12/12: Immigration issues solve themselves
12/06/12: Durbin's deficiency
11/29/12: Man of the century
11/21/12: A big scandal coming?
11/14/12: U.S. should follow the Swedish path
11/07/12: Hanging from a poll
• 10/31/12: A dream that wouldn't come true
• 10/29/12: When the 'kooks' and 'racists' turn out to be your ideological allies
• 10/24/12: The pettiness refuge
• 10/18/12: An interruption that tells a bigger tale
• 10/17/12: A recovery that wasn't
• 10/12/12: Big Bird squabble points to something real
• 10/11/12: The 'war' you don't hear about --- the one on average Americans
• 08/22/12: Obama leadership: Romney's returns trump road to recovery
• 08/15/12: Saving Medicare the Ryan way
• 08/01/12: Combatting free speech
• 07/25/12: Good and bad reactions to Colorado horror
• 07/18/12: Apology time for Obama
• 07/16/12: Free markets solve climate change threats
• 07/11/12: Humans and particles and those who would order them
• 07/06/12: Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
• 07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
• 07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
• 06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
• 06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
• 06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
• 06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
• 06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
• 06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
• 06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
• 06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
• 05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
• 05/23/12: Student loans fail students
• 05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
• 05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
• 05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
• 05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
• 05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
• 04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
• 04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
• 04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
• 04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
• 04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
• 04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
• 04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
• 04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
• 03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
• 03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
• 03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest —- or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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