The media and I
News programs no longer serve simply as a medium for fact. An additional focus has evolved to become a dominant aspect of a program; to captivate the audience. Although the center of a show is still the spread of information, the codes and conventions of a news cast are intended to entrance an audience, which can be seen in music, direction, and story choices.
Admittedly, the core of a news cast is still the process of transmitting information. Tragically, this information is rarely, if ever, without bias. The most abundant displays of slanted or entirely falsified information can be found on the Fox News Channel, divided evenly between "The O'Reilly Factor" and "Hannity & Colmes." The antics on these shows undermine the credibility of the network, leaving other news programs with a residue tainted by sensationalism. While these shows do not disturb networks other than Fox, they are the pinnacle example to express the overall feel of contemporary newscasts.
The music used is pervasive. The urgent beat and ticking and pounding drums demand, rather than plead, for the viewer's attention. It speaks of disasters and imminent danger and the need to pay attention now. What response is there but to pay attention to this all important herald? Interestingly, the most urgent music in the program occurs during the lottery segment and directly before commercial breaks. This seems to suggest that of all the information to be given each night, it is most important to listen tothe people who want your money.
The director's choices are made to ensure the viewer is entertained, not educated. Fast-paced teasers abound before commercials and even between segments, screaming "You can not stop watching now! The most important story is yet to be heard! Martha Stuart said she wants to go to jail!" We'll get back to Martha later. In the meantime, consider both what the director has decided and what is taught in the class room. The human brain will be bored with an image after approximately seven seconds. That's it. No more. New shot. And whoever is in charge of Fox News at 10 must have paid attention in class. Within a reasonable error of one second or so, every image in the first story lasted almost exactly seven seconds. The story was on a political race in New York. It seems that the candidates may have had more than seven seconds' worth of things to say to the public, but these had to
be reduced to bytes or the audience might get bored. (On a personal note, despite paying attention to the story, I cannot remember what office the race was for, or the precise town. I think Albany. It just went by too fast) The point is that important information was sacrificed to ensure that viewers at home would stay on long enough to hear Martha Stuart speak.
Wait. The most important story, the one that you must not for the love of God go to bed before is what Martha Stuart had to say? Who cares what Martha Stuart says? What she says will not (or at least should not) change anyone's life. Nor will most of the stories played. A brief list of stories in the first half of the newscast:
-The political race previously mentioned
-Flooding from Hurricane Ivan
-A fire from a gas line
-A murder trial with a missing body
-A diabetic who didn't bring his meds with him and died
-More on Hurricane Ivan
-Weather.
They're even in that order. These news stories should not matter to most people. It is a semi-local broadcast, so Hurricane Ivan really doesn't concern the audience too much, except in passing interest. Two thousand homes lost power briefly from the gas line fire, so there is some relative significance, except that the people who lost their power already knew it. Again, just passing interest. The murder and the diabetic? The significance to people in proportion to the number of people watching is staggeringly irrelivent. Which of these stories did matter to the viewers? Most likely the politics and the non-Ivan weather. The politics were jammed in the beginning, and weren't to pop up in the newscast ever again. So why the decision to play all those other stories? Is the network diabolically keeping us poorly informed? Possibly, but that's not the point here. The network, more than anything, needs to
keep us entertained, so that we'll keep watching that network, and they will continue to make money.
This is not the network's fault. This is our fault. We still watch, don't we? And you know that important stuff that was just glossed over by the 10 o'clock news? There are stations that cover that stuff twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and they aren't even half as biased as Fox. But we don't want to watch it, because it all sounds really, really boring. Funny how important things like politics and schoolwork tend to be such downers, huh? That does not make us, the viewer, any less responsible. And the networks are just giving back to us what we tell them we want. So, really, we just need to tell them that we want something better. But remember, I'm just as biased as they are.
The Presidents of the United States of America -- Some Postman doesn't fit in the "What are you listening to?" section.