Essay by Martha Quillen
Media – January 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
BOB EWEGEN, deputy editorial page editor and columnist for The Denver Post, says “Journalism is the art of relentless oversimplification,” and Ed often quotes him on that.
But if they’re talking about journalism today, their assessment may be too optimistic.
In our era, there are days when the evening news shows don’t bother with the news at all — and that’s got to be pretty obvious to anyone with a television. One night last week, Channel 9 News led with the Broncos, went on to show an interview with a Bronco, then broke for the weather, and closed with the Broncos. Apparently it was a slow news day in Denver.
But even so, with a war in Afghanistan, and U.N. crews arriving in Iraq, and numerous U.S. troops waiting to be shipped to the Middle East, you would think that Channel 9 would have something to report on the national and foreign fronts. But even on good news days, Denver’s evening news shows usually offer less than fifteen minutes of news, including ads, features and cute animal stories. The rest is weather and sports.
Today, international news tends to be relegated to the world news programs, and they air from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. — which is typically before working adults even arrive home — and those broadcasts are not repeated in the 10 o’clock time slot, either.
But presumably commuters can watch morning news shows — except morning shows typically broadcast even less hard news than their evening counterparts.
A study funded by the Pew Research Center and conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that 32% of morning newscast time, excluding commercial breaks, was devoted to selling products or promoting sponsors.
The same study showed that before 9-11, morning news shows dedicated 6.9% of their newscast to hard news, whereas evening programs devoted 45.5% to hard news.
And according to a report in The Boston Globe foreign news content on television dropped by a whopping two-thirds in the 1990s. But that’s television, and if you really want news you read, right?
Sure. But everybody else cut their foreign news in the ’90s, too, including Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. And foreign coverage by the press also dropped dramatically, decreasing from 10.2% of news space in U.S. newspapers in 1971, to less than 2% in the nineties.
But in 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center ignited a wake-up call. After 9-11, news shows featured more foreign news, but the increase may not have come soon enough. And at this point, foreign coverage seems to be slipping once again.
Yet some critics actually believe that rather than blaming the CIA and our government for ignoring the factors leading to 9-11, we should blame the media moguls. For years now, they’ve been reducing foreign coverage even though an upsurge in terrorist attacks against Americans was well documented.
So do we have enough foreign coverage now? And more importantly, is U.S. news coverage good enough?
At this point, almost everyone agrees: Our national media are failing us, and Americans are pretty ignorant about the world around them.
OF COURSE, some of that’s our own fault. According to the powers that be, Americans show a disinterest in foreign affairs. Put a foreign picture on the cover of your magazine, and we won’t buy it (or at least we wouldn’t before 9-11 ). Apparently Americans are detached isolationists — except when it comes to sending in troops. We want to know about national issues: our health care, our economy, and our crime rate.
On the other hand, I suspect we’d also like our Presidents to stay home a little more and pay attention to us, because even though we live in the richest country on earth, we have problems, too. We don’t have the highest life expectancy in the world or the lowest infant mortality rate. Americans don’t have the highest literacy rates, either, and we work more hours per week than anyone else on the planet.
Furthermore, our wealth distribution is pretty inequitable. We’ve got lots of hard-working people who can’t afford adequate homes or medical care. And the U.S. doesn’t offer much of a safety net to its unfortunate citizens, either. We’ve got mentally ill people living on our streets, and families living in their cars.
But even so, our President is not going to keep his mind on home. Presidents never have, and they probably never will. Today, the U.S. has got the world’s largest gross national product and the world’s largest military, and it’s the world’s greatest power. And thus the President that we didn’t quite vote for two years ago wields more influence — and weapons — than any other leader on earth.
Yet Americans don’t necessarily know as much about the world as people living elsewhere. There’s a little squib about news circulation in the “Nations” section of every World Almanac, and the U.S. is not even particularly high in newspaper readership.
According to the 2002 almanac, daily newspaper circulation in the United States was 215 per 1,000 population. In Australia it was 297; in Austria, 296; in Finland, 455; in Germany 311; in Iceland, 515; in Israel, 219; in the Netherlands, 306; in Norway, 588.
On the other hand, we aren’t the leaders in ignoring world affairs, either. In Canada, newspaper circulation was only 157 per 1,000; and it tends to be low in Middle Eastern countries: 28 per 1,000 in Iran; 27 in Iraq; 62 in Jordan. And even lower in parts of Africa: 8 per 1,000 in Congo; 13 in Zambia; 17 in Zimbabwe.
BUT SINCE AMERICAN PRESIDENTS and corporations are generally overactive abroad — and since we seem to have troops everywhere — Americans should probably pay more attention to international affairs.
But how can we do that if U.S. foreign news coverage isn’t good?
According to International News & Foreign Correspondents, a book by Stephen Hess, foreign reporting is too sporadic, anecdotal, and focused on the trouble spots.
Assuming that we haven’t bombed them, and they haven’t attacked us, and a hurricane or earthquake hasn’t struck, other countries may as well be on Jupiter for all of the news coverage our media give them.
But a few weeks ago, I did see a blurb about foreign affairs after the news — except it promoted an Oprah show. Find out why foreigners hate us, the teaser promised.
And the show delivered. Oprah asked ABC correspondents to address that question, and they put together man on the street interviews from numerous countries, including Venezuela and Columbia.
IN COLUMBIA, people said that the U.S. had devastated their countryside, ruined their farms, and put so much money into drug cartels that the entire population was threatened.
“But isn’t the real problem drugs?” the announcer asked.
“Yes,” one woman agreed. Your problem is drugs. But it’s not like we have a problem with drugs. As she sees it, Americans have this huge appetite for drugs, and our government has torn her entire country apart trying to keep us on the straight and narrow.
From France came a curious complaint: You have such beautiful looking food, but you don’t even care how it tastes.
In Venezuela, a miner bitterly denounced the U.S. Our incessant need was ruining everything. We wanted more, more, more.
Over and over again, from every country, the message was the same: “What is wrong with you people, anyway?”
And one of the most obvious reasons for this glut of anti-American sentiment is that they know all about us, but we don’t know anything about them. Our lack of awareness seems to be fueling anger world-wide. But our news organizations don’t make it easy to learn about our fellow man.
What passes for news in our country is downright irritating. For the most part, the evening news features sports, weather and true crime. If you want information, you’d probably do as well watching a ball game, The Weather Channel and Unsolved Mysteries.
If you want to know what your governor is doing, or what your legislature is passing, or what country we bombed yesterday, you’d better read a newspaper. But even with a metro newspaper on hand, it’s not always easy to find important foreign news — and it may not even be there.
There are also all-news television channels, however, like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. Except some of them seem to have taken their cue from the World Wrestling Federation and Jerry Springer: fights are more fun. Today, far too much of our news is aired on talk shows where everybody is yelling so vociferously that it’s impossible to figure out what the real issues are.
And another truly annoying ploy, which Fox in particular loves, is running all of the real, breaking news in typewritten script across the bottom of the screen — as if the least important thing the station has to offer is information on what actually happened that day.
A few nights ago, I saw a squib on Fox which said that air strikes in Southern Iraq continue. And I thought, why are we bombing Southern Iraq? In the last report I’d seen, Hussein had agreed to let U.N. inspectors in, so we presumably weren’t going to war — at least not yet. Yet here was a report of new air strikes.
So what kind of attacks were these? And what were they attacks on?
I looked and looked — channel surfing more determinedly than any of those guys the women on talk shows complain about — and I finally found two live reports, including one on CNN Headline News (now ain’t that a revealing title, and to think, they probably weren’t even trying to be facetious).
BUT BOTH REPORTS said nearly the same thing as the trailing type on the bottom of my screen: the U.S. and Britain were carrying out air strikes in Southern Iraq over places with fairly typical middle eastern names (like Basrah, Nasrah, or Kasrah). And that meant nothing whatsoever to me, because this news was presented without context or background information — as usual. (And I could have bet my last dollar without gambling a cent that there wouldn’t be any meaningful follow-ups on the television stations in the days and weeks to come, either.)
If I wanted to know more, I’d probably have to move to Great Britain, since BBC news is considerably better than ours — when it’s on. But it’s not on very often at our house because we get BBC America, and like every other television network, the BBC clearly assumes that Americans appreciate idiotic sitcoms and grade C movies more than quality programming.
Thus, television offers us a bunch of shallow, superficial headlines without the news, and more and more often, newspapers and news magazines seem to be following suit.
But don’t take my word for it. Recently the Rocky Mountain News excerpted a speech by Geneva Overholser, a former reporter and editor who is currently a professor of journalism at the University of Missouri. She said: “People think journalists are pushy and obnoxious, cynical and superficial, self-infatuated and bent on hobnobbing with the powerful. They think we confuse news and entertainment, embrace sensationalism, and care more about prizes than we do about the public … And you know what? I am here to tell you that things are worse than that. The picture is actually more worrisome, actually significantly drearier, than you know.”
SHE GOES ON TO CITE a myriad of problems with the media, including: “entertainment and scandal crowd out substantive news”; the culture of journalism is “risk-averse” and slow to make changes; editors move too frequently and have less knowledge of their communities than they did in the past; there’s a tendency since 9-11 to practice “feel good” journalism rather than ask the hard questions, especially in the face of legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act; journalists receive very little training; papers are understaffed; and reporters are underpaid.
And finally there’s what Overholser sees as journalism’s most challenging problem: there’s a decline in local ownership, and the new corporate chains are under pressure from Wall Street and stockholders to turn a profit; therefore the focus of the press today is often on reducing costs rather than on news.
Overholser isn’t the only expert fretting about the quality of the news. Authors Stephen Hess, Leonard Downie Jr., and Robert Kaiser also decry the decline in foreign news coverage in the ’90s. And authors James D. Squires, David McGowan, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Peter Phillips, Howard Kurtz, Ben Bagdikian, and Robert McChesney all lambaste modern corporate journalism.
In a survey of 103 television news directors, half of them thought that television news was headed in the wrong direction. And after the Project for Excellence in Journalism explored the state of television news, they entitled their study’s prologue: “On the Road to Irrelevance.”
Critics also denounce our media’s devotion to war and disaster. When catastrophes turn our attention abroad, reporters tend to descend enmass, but such coverage doesn’t teach us about foreign countries or illuminate the underlying issues.
Yet our news sources only seem interested in mayhem. American newspapers carried more front page stories about Afghanistan in the first four months after 9-11 than they had in the previous forty years.
And after the uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the three major television networks carried more stories about China than they had in all of the years from 1972 — when China was first opened to the West — to 1981.
With no new bloody photo ops, however, coverage in China fell abruptly in 1990.
And there’s another troubling side to television news. Last May, Politically Incorrect was cancelled, and Bill Maher, the talk show’s controversial host, claims that it was because of things he said about America’s war on terror. But Maher won’t be missed by a lot of viewers — since he tended to ridicule Catholics, Christians and Moslems, and to defend racial and ethnic profiling.
Furthermore, in my view, Maher and his guests often seemed willfully and woefully ignorant about the news they were discussing. So I rarely watched, and reportedly Maher’s ratings had been falling for quite some time. Thus cancellation of Maher’s show was neither surprising, nor as ominously repressive as he would have it.
IN ALL PROBABILITY, Maher was not dismissed for challenging current nationalistic conventions. His show was probably cancelled because it failed in the ratings, alienated advertisers, and couldn’t compete with more conventional fare. But that scenario may spell even worse things for the future of the news.
After the cancellation of Politically Incorrect, ABC Chairman Lloyd Braun claimed that Maher’s controversial comments had nothing to do with the cancellation. According to Braun, the network had decided to go with straight entertainment programming in late night because it offers more long-term potential.
And if Braun’s telling the truth, the news is in serious trouble. Currently, ABC carries Nightline, one of the only news shows which regularly features foreign topics at a time when most people aren’t at work (or on their way home). But not too long ago, the network hoped to replace Nightline with Letterman.
Fortunately, Letterman wasn’t inclined to move, but eventually, something else will no doubt nab this lucrative spot. Foreign news just doesn’t have the dazzle to compete. In fact, even Maher — with his blustery, snide manner and disparaging jokes — probably owes his fleeting success to being a stand-up comedian. News anchors and foreign affairs experts need not apply.
NEWS PROGRAMS probably aren’t going to rebound any time soon since recycled sitcoms, dramas and movies are cheaper, and variety shows and comedians attract larger audiences. And the programs that do endure will no doubt be cut and crafted for ratings and dollars rather than for quality or integrity.
Once upon a time, Nightline, was a bright spot in the realm of television coverage. During the conflict in Nicaragua and El Salvador, the show tried to air live reports, and illuminate U.S. policy, and highlight Central American history and culture. Now, however, Nightline often airs lifestyle features and crime news just like everybody else.
But it’s better than nothing, and we’ve also got NPR offering foreign perspectives, and local publications and radio stations which offer a little foreign news. And we’ve got the internet, which offers infinite access if you’ve got the time and patience. But that’s simply not enough.
There are just too many things about America’s role in the world that I don’t know, including:
Whatever happened to those ethnic Albanians we fought for? What’s happening in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Iran today? Do we still have peace-keeping troops in the Balkans? What countries won’t we trade with? And what is our DEA doing these days? Where are they? In Columbia? Or Mexico? Or Leadville? And what about the CIA? Where are they?
Wherever they are, I suspect that the people who live there are bound to find out — even if we don’t. And that’s a problem.
Of course, some people will say that such information is classified. But even so, once it’s unclassified and people overseas know, we should too. And surely knowing what’s happening in the rest of the world is as important as finding out about Goldie Hahn’s personal philosophy on life, or whether Whitney Houston has a drug problem, or what the Ramsey’s are doing post-Jon Benet.
Americans need to be aware of what their government is doing abroad — because we are being held accountable. Yet our foreign news coverage has been unreliable, intermittent, biased, sensationalistic and incomplete.
But there is one bright spot in all of this tale of woe. In lamenting the state of international news today, most experts conclude that the majority of Americans are interested in local news. And they also imply that local and national news is thriving. That might not be much consolation when the terrorists arrive with hand-held missile launchers. But it made me feel better
. –Martha Quillen