People love to accuse the media of having biases. Liberal bias.
Conservative bias. Corporate bias. But these biases dim in
comparison to the media’s biggest problem ““ the great
profit motive.
The profit motive, prevalent mostly in local TV news programs,
has been driving down the standard of news for years.
To prepare for this column, I subjected myself to watching the
local nightly newscasts over the weekend.
In terms of substantive content, they were pretty bad. Some
stories bore a stark resemblance to an episode of “The
Simpsons,” where Bart rises to the top of a
“Kid’s News” show by doing a series of
meaningless human-interest stories called “Bart’s
People.”
Because media outlets are businesses that have to create
profits, they are forced to compete with one another for
viewership. Unlike print media, whose audience is rather stable
because it relies on a subscription base, television must cater to
channel-surfing viewers with low attention spans.
How does TV media appeal to these viewers? By presenting news
stories as dramatic narratives, not thought-provoking journalistic
pieces. Television news coverage is sensationalistic and includes
more and more “soft” human-interest stories that blur
the line between entertainment and news.
As an example, here is a summary of the 5 o’clock CBS news
from Sunday night. The first third of the show presented world,
national and local headlines ““ including stories on same-sex
marriages in Massachusetts and an escaped prisoner with a mug shot
of a scary looking guy.
The second third of the show had a segment on sports and on
weather. The last third of the show had a story on the shortening
of the next season of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” a
story on Jamie Foxx’s new movie “Breakin’ All the
Rules” and an awful investigative reporting piece on how
keeping cool this summer could be dangerous: What you need to know
about electric fans.
After the newscast ended, I had this sad feeling that hundreds
of thousands of viewers came out of it thinking about scary
prisoners, the Lakers and killer electric fans.
To be fair, I watched the 6 o’clock CBS newscast to give
it a second chance. It wasn’t much better. While it did have
a great investigative piece on the possible misuse of taxpayer
money in a downtown building purchase, it followed with a couple of
really bad human-interest stories. One was about the Charles Manson
murders in relation to a new made-for-TV movie about Charles Manson
and the other was a frightening story about tips on how to escape
abduction.
The abduction piece even had a dramatic reenactment complete
with a scary, anonymous-looking bad guy dressed in black.
These CBS newscasts are illustrative of a problem that is
pervasive throughout local newscasts. If you miss the regular show
time for “Cops,” you can always tune in to KCAL 9 and
watch an exciting police chase.
L.A. newscasts also have so much entertainment news coverage
that you don’t even have to watch “Entertainment
Tonight” or “Access Hollywood” anymore.
The line between entertainment and news has become so blurred
that entertainers are now delivering our news to us.
Case in point is Jillian Barberie, former local Fox weatherwoman
and current co-host of “Good Day L.A.,” a morning news
program. Alongside these news programs, she has also hosted the
“Extreme Dating” show, had a recurring role as
“Foxy Levin” in Pamela Anderson’s
“V.I.P.” show and had appearances on
“Clueless” and “Beverly Hills 90210.”
With their greater focus on “soft” news stories,
local television newscasts are losing sight of their journalistic
role of keeping the public well informed. In-depth, substantive
“hard” news is being sacrificed on the altar of
sensationalism in the name of higher ratings. Something needs to be
done to reverse the increasingly negative impacts of the profit
motive on local news.
One option would be to increase public funding of new sources to
help eliminate the profit motive. Publicly funded news outlets such
as PBS and the BBC are renowned for providing far more substantive
and in-depth coverage than their counterparts in the private
sector.
Publicly funded news would still have its drawbacks though. PBS
and the BBC are often accused of having a liberal bias. More
importantly, it can be more difficult for news outlets to maintain
freedom of the press when the government has control in their
budgets.
On an individual level, L.A. residents need to realize local
newscasts are not providing quality coverage of important issues.
They can help by turning to other outlets such as print, online and
national broadcast news. Maybe in the meantime, I can follow the
lead of Bart Simpson and start my own series of meaningless pieces
called “Mike’s People.”
Bitondo is a third-year political science and history
student. E-mail him at mbitondo@media.ucla.edu. Send general
comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.