We! The People Webzine: News not Infomercials by Norla M. Antinoro

News not Infomercials

by Norla M. Antinoro
January 30, 2007

If Edward R. Murrow were to come back, he would not recognize today's news world. Yes, he understood that he had to entertain as well as inform. But he entertained with his other show, he kept the news to inform the world. When faced with the attempt to shut him up, he stood firm. He stood up and faced, in a reasonable balanced fashion, one of the most evil influences ever to surface in American politics: Joe McCarthy. Faced McCarthy down and backed him off.

Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, the people who brought us the news and taught us to trust that the news we were getting was real and honest. Would those men be able to convince us today? Would they be able to stand as strong as they did then?

I doubt it. You see, when they were the voices of the news, the FCC held to what was known as the fairness doctrine. The fairness doctrine held that if one side was given air time, the opposing side had to also be given air time. If the Republican got 10 minutes, the Democrat had to be given ten minutes. If the opponents of the proposition got two minutes, the supporters had to be given two minutes. Of course, people were people even then and if the station did not like one side or the other, their time might be after the late show just before sign off or Sunday morning before the sermons started. But they did get the time, it was FCC mandated.

Broadcast outlets also had to serve the public as well as conform to the rules of the FCC. Each time their license came up for renewal they had to make an announcement that their license was being reviewed and give the public a fair chance to testify to the FCC about whether they had fulfilled their mandate to public service. So every radio and TV station had "public service announcements" to help fulfill that obligation. Local charities were given free minutes, announcements were made about all kinds of things the public could benefit from knowing.

These were not the "good old days" by any means. There were a lot of things wrong with the world even then. Bigotry was rampant, as much or more so than it is now.

To keep the corporations from being able to control the news, restrictions were put on what a given company could own in the way of news and communication outlets. If they had five radio stations they could not also own six newspapers and two TV stations and a news magazine. No one company or two could lock down the news or determine what the American public was going to see presented as the truth of the day because they could not own enough different news and communications outlets to keep a story under wraps or controlled. The Bush administration has done its best to lift all the ownership restrictions, allowing the largest of the communications giants to own hard copy news and broadcast news as well as both radio and TV stations galore.

Over the past few weeks I have been trying to find the best way to monitor the news. World news, American news, local news. Remembering how it used to be, when I still watched TV back in the mid90s, I signed on and went to the CNN web site and looked around. I saw stories about the UK version of some "Survivor" type 'reality" show where a woman from India won and nearly started race riots as a result between the bigots and the anti-bigots. That was the big story. The CNN of the early to mid 90s would not have used that story for more than filler on their hourly wrap up unless it was a no-news days.

Let's look at the CNN page today and see if there is any news. The top stories of this hard hitting news organization? "Over ambitious eagle knocks out power line." "Clinton quip gets laughs." "WWII Vet wins Lottery." "Dead Soldier will father child with woman he never knew." "Idiot Window Washer gets on ledge no rope." "New troops will face Al Quaida Loyalists." "Injured Barbaro Euthanized" [that's the horse that won the Kentucky Derby] [video promised on this one]. "Former Bush aide contradicts Libby." "Ushers tackle armed robber in church service." "Prolific child molester gets 150 years." Prolific? That is not a word I would use to describe a mass abuser of children. Prolific refers to productive actions. Like bearing fruit, having babies, painting pictures, or writing books. [http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/prolific]. Child abuse is not a fruitful activity or a productive one. Prolific is the wrong word to use.

Okay. That's the front page of CNN for this hour. Most of those stories would not have qualified as "color" in the days of Edward R. Murrow. The story about Barbaro being killed would probably have been tucked away in the sports section of the paper and news broadcasts. But where is the stuff that Edward R. Murrow would have called hard news? Even if you go looking for it, it is short changed. You can pop over to the link: updates on the world's top stories and get a nutshell description of a few news stories. But tucked away behind a click lost among detritus.

What went on in congress today? What actions were taken by our troops? What happened in the UN? What about the big protest rallies? How many protesters were arrested? Have they been held or released? How many cities had protests? How big were they? What major actions took place in Iraq and Afghanistan? What's the status of global warming? What's happening with the ANWR? What major legislation is pending? Introduced by whom and why?

Can we compare that set of stories to BBC's front page and CBC's front page? It's downright embarrassing. CNN used to be the top, most hard hitting news agency we had. Thirty minutes of every hour was dedicated to the hard news. Then the second part of the hour would get more detail or selected stories and, if there was time, a bit of color.

The BBC's front page is an entirely different story and yet CNN is the closest thing we have to BBC. BBC's front page has Fatah and Hamas agree to cease fire. Why is that not on the CNN front page? That is major news. A warlord goes on trial for war crimes in the ICC. Glaciers are melting faster. Africa and Darfur. Arrest of a Dutch man on US terror charges. Israel violates arms rules. This is the news. Where is America's news voice now? The NBC page has clicks to three or four stories but is mostly an ad for their TV shows. ABC's main story is about Miss America in rehab. Well, while I am glad for anyone who finds their way to rehab, it ain't news.

The news has always been one of the biggest money makers the networks have. When did they decide that they would make more money by substituting infomercials in place of the news? Was that something that came in with the news century? Hurray, it's 2000, let's throw out everything we have gained in the communications realm and turn it into a way to do nothing at all but make money for the corporations that own the stations and the hard copy outlets.

It's tied up with money. There is no question about that. What makes so little sense to me is that they do not realize what a gold mine there is in real news. People are hungry for the truth about what is happening in their world. The news station that brings the truth back to the news will make a fortune.

What good is it to protect the first amendment rights of the journalists and media if they do not use those rights to inform the public and bring reliable news to their audiences? You can entertain and inform at the same time. Anyone who has been a successful teacher knows that to be true. As a matter of fact, informing and teaching is best done by entertaining. That's why solitaire and similar games were included on the earliest computers. They taught in a non threatening manner with no words or texts how to use the mouse and keyboard together. We take them for granted now but these games and the more sophisticated computer games that evolved later are used to teach all kinds of skills. They are pure entertainment. They are teaching tools par excellence.

So there is no excuse for leaving out the news just because you make money with entertainment. You can do both. What you cannot do is manage the news and tell the truth at the same time. There is where the problem lies, in my opinion. The large corporations are interested not in just making money but in controlling and manipulating the marketplace and the audience. If that were not their primary goal, they would welcome the fairness doctrine and the mandate to public service that this series of republican administrations have discarded.

The corporations that provide our news have always been greedy. Audience, readership, advertising, dollars, time, market share. These have always driven the profession. But I can remember when there was also a pride of workmanship. News brought to the public in an unbiased, realistic fashion was something to be proud of. The voices that brought us our nightly news were the voices that America trusted. Now they are dismissed as "talking heads" and rightly so. What they bring us is not news, it is product pure and simple. They want to hold our attention long enough to get their ads in front of our faces. Like the slick magazine of today, they are all about the ads and the ads dominate cover to cover.

The closing words of Edward R. Murrow sound as if the man had some kind of foresight about the terrible losses we were going to suffer. Losses of rights. Losses of honor. We truly need the luck he wished us then.

To find the news today, you have to go looking for it. I have a collection of about a dozen news sources online and if I read all of them every day I can just about duplicate the kind of news coverage I got from watching a half hour of CNN in 1990 or the nightly news with Edward R. Murrow in my childhood.

The things we have allowed to slip away need to be reclaimed. Our civil rights need to be restored and we need to get back on the path to insuring that they improve, not just hold the line against slipping back into the dark ages. The environment needs to be protected. We need not to just restore the protections we had in 2000, we need to build more and create a solid successor to the Kyoto Treaty and sign on. All of the destruction of the good things in our country needs to be repaired. Let's start with an increase in the minimum wage so that the phrase working poor becomes an oxymoron. Let's move on to restoring the fairness doctrine for our communications media. There is so much to do.

I leave you with Edward R. Murrow's nightly wish for us all: Goodnight. And Good luck.