NewsFlash: The Real Cost of the News

Picture This: The evening news, primetime viewing. These are some of the reports. First up is the latest report on Darfur, Sudan, informing that the UN is pushing the Security Council to act on the violence still occurring there. There's also an interview with a refugee who survived and witnessed the genocide. The latest news on Terri Schiavo is reported. In the religious news there's the latest report on the health of the Pope, and more on the situation for thousands of Christians in Nigeria who have fled militant muslims. Dozens have already been massacred. As part of ongoing coverage of the HIV/AIDS pandemic there is this report on a beauty contest with a difference in Botswana.
And there's not one mention of Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart or Paris Hilton's address book.

So why don't we see news broadcasts with stories like these on a regular basis? I've been reading Newsflash by Bonnie Anderson, who has been a journalist for 27 years. She spent 10 years with NBC News and nearly 10 years with CNN. While at CNN she became Vice-President of recruiting. Anderson doesn't take a liberal vs. conservative bias approach, but looks at the real bottom line in how the news is selected and presented - the drive for profits. She gives examples of infotainers instead of experienced journalists as anchors, the focus on live coverage even when there is nothing actually happening live at the location, the selection of celebrity stories as top headliners, and the non-stop coverage of stories such as the OJ Simpson trial - at the expense of many other stories that were more important. She writes:

"Just take a look at what you see on cable and broadcast news programs and decide for yourself whether the people at the top (news executives and corporate officers) have changed not only how news is reported but also the definition of what is news. And while this might be more subtle, the ranking of news stories - which is more important, which should be told first - has also been affected. For example the deaths of entertainers such as Bob Hope, Johnny Cash, and John Ritter were reported not only first in evening broadcasts but also in stories lasting several minutes, while the deaths of soldiers in Iraq and deadly monsoons in North Korea were given a fraction of the attention."

She's right. I've watched reports on Michael Jackson on the evening news every night during the last week - even when the report is yet another video of him walking into court followed by another statement from his PR person. Sudan hasn't been mentioned once. Why don't we see primetime coverage of stories such as the Darfur genocide crisis, the nuclear waste currently washing up on African shores after the tsunami, or the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and any successful attempts to curtail it's prevalence? Why aren't there some reports on the current progress in malaria research - a disease which 200 million people suffer from each year? Instead we are given stories on David Beckham's latest family happening (pregancy, christening, new hairdo...), or some similar entertainment value report masquerading as real news. The cost of all the shallow infotainment is the coverage of issues which affect millions of people, and which would generate support from around the globe. To quote Anderson:

"Who cares about a country in Africa when our newscast has the latest photos and gossip about Prince William?"

We Christians often talk about having a biblical worldview. Yet we aren't going to get a biblical worldview from the MSM (mainstream media). We are going to get what we should expect from any system that is what we would call a system of this world - entertainment, competitiveness at the expense of content, and shallow selectivity. I can imagine a news broadcast from the MSM in Israel 2000 years ago: Pilate and Herod have had diplomatic negotiations and a new relationship of mutual accord has begun, more expansion of the extensive Roman highway system is planned, the new entertainers at Caesar's Palace have wowed the audience in Rome.... And not one mention of a carpenter and religious leader who was crucified that day. Anderson notes in Newsflash:

"CNN could afford war correspondents, medical correspondents, general assignment correspondents, technology correspondents, ecology correspondents, sports correspondents, travel correspondents, and weather anchors - but the network could not afford one religion correspondent. One correspondent who could serve seven television networks, two radio networks, and CNN's Internet sites. Religion was not important enough to merit it's own beat on CNN. This was not just bad journalism, it was a stupid business decision. And why did it go nearly uncontested? Few, if any, of CNN's top management - or anyone else for that matter - are devoutly religious."

Anderson's attempt to hire a religion reporter failed because CNN cut the position from the budget.

From my perspective, whether an MSM station is viewed as liberal or conservative these general criticisms hold. Across the board entertainment is paraded as news with too much priority.

Recently I've been seeing weblog posts about Sudan - either updating the situation or questioning why the MSM are not reporting on it. This excellent post from Intent gives a situation overview and ways to help. It's been called the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world - but for the most part any news is being withheld by the major global news services. To their credit, the BBC has covered it in their world service, both on television and on the internet. But considering the number of people affected and the atrocities comitted, the media has remained largely silent.

While I don't agree with everything in Anderson's book, I do concur with her general overview and much of her critique. And I found her most rewarding assignment interesting. I'll leave you with parts of her account of how she reported on the Ethiopian famine in 1984:

"But no amount of dust and sand could obscure the human tragedy unfolding around us. Tens of thousands of refugees, skeletal men, women, and children, were walking toward the Sudanese border in a desparate effort to save their lives.
... It didn't matter which way we pointed our camera, there was material for our stories everywhere we turned.
... After a couple of days we knew we had the material we needed. We could have stayed longer, but we felt a sense of urgency to get the story out to the world. We cut the trip short. The stories - there ended up being about ten of them - were all aired on NBC Nightly news with Tom Brockaw.
... There was an immediate public reaction across the United States. Newspapers picked up the story and it continued to spread like wildfire, with aid agencies being inundated with contributions from generous Americans.
... Even though my scripts weren't the most polished I'd ever written, this was the best, most responsible journalism I've ever done."