Is There any Excuse for TV News?
- Written after watching a segment about soldier risk in Iraq
“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Main and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” ––Henry David Thoreau
History of our demise:
The telegraph gave us context-free information; information about which we knew nothing of before, and which came in the form of headlines we could understand little of, for they offered no depth. The value of information no longer needed to be tied to social function, but instead became attached to curiosity, novelty, and interest.
In 1844 the Associated Press was founded, and all of a sudden everybody knew news about wars, floods, crashes, fires, crimes; the “news of he day.” This news had no constructive effect on its readers. What do you intend to do about rising fuel prices, melting icecaps or the treatment of people in Darfur? All we can do is vote, and give information to pollsters (that information being transformed into more news).
After the telegraph came the photograph. We were given images of the news, and a real dent in argument-based news reporting. It makes no sense to argue with a photograph, for unless it is faked, the evidence that lies within is indisputable. The photograph gave a sort of concrete reality to the strange sounding headlines and faces whom we were being told about.
And then television. The average length of a shot on television is under ten seconds. Our newscasters are chosen by how credible they look. Our reporters have the same traits: sincerity, authenticity, vulnerability, and attractiveness. The average length of a story is about 45 seconds, giving us no time to become knowledgeable about the subject matter, and immediately skipping onto the next topic, giving us no time for reflection. Our emotions are prearranged with musical backgrounds. Anchors report floods, wars, famines, and rapes with the same ingratiating enthusiasm.
Result:
We are extremely well informed about issues, if by informed you mean “understanding that such a topic exists.” But our opinions are mere emotions, demonstrated by the frequent shifts in the polls. As they are emotions, they can be changed, sculpted to fit whatever is the most convenient.
We believe that soldiers are most at risk in war nowadays. Why? Because the television news is full of headlines about soldiers and policemen who have died, weeping families with blond children unsure if their father/husband is safe. The reality is that about seventy percent of the deaths associated with war (if we are not to count deaths from starvation and illness and militias and displacement in the years afterwards) are civilian, perhaps even more.
2756 American soldiers dead since the start of the war in 2003. One estimate puts it that between 400,000 and 700,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. That’s 99% collateral damage.
We need to move on. Whether the internet is any better for the news we have yet to find out, but surely it cannot be any worse.
