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Monday, August 11, 2008
You think TV news is bad? So does this the Guardian …
Europeans have long charged that TV news in the United States is dreadful: obsessed with trivia and celebrity, forever interviewing citizens about some artifact of small-town life when a major news story is breaking elsewhere.
But in London’s Guardian newspaper, commentator Kieren McCarthy says the truth is far, far worse than the above.
He said that although there are a multitude of news channels — CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC — after an hour of flipping between them one day last week, this was the sum total of information gleaned: “there are two U.S. presidential candidates; they have produced campaign ads, people have made video parodies and posted them on the Internet; a U.S. TV news host appeared on a U.S. TV chat show last night; and someone said something controversial (read ignorant) on a different TV show the day before.”
In the meantime, one of the most sought-after war criminals in the world had been arrested and sent for trial; several new scientific breakthroughs had been announced; Zimbabwe edged carefully toward shared government; and countless other real stories came and went.
What’s worse, he says, is that there is absolutely no effort to provide historical context. “The news is paced so frenetically that anything beyond soundbites is not tolerated. News anchors consistently talk over the top of anyone that doesn’t provide a punchy point every 10 seconds. Swooshing graphics and dance music add to the general level of pace - which effectively masks the fact that almost nothing is being provided beyond personal opinion.”
He laments the fact that two comedy programs, The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, are possibly the main source of news for anyone in America under the age of 30.
Ouch.
