Why I (Almost) Never Watch the News Anymore
Someone who writes about politics as often as I do needs to keep up with a rapidly changing landscape, so it would seem obligatory to spend a good deal of time digesting what the various print, online, and television media are covering. But alas, immersing myself willy-nilly in the plethora of news sources now available to anyone with a television or a cell phone has become at best a waste of time and at worst counterproductive.
News is supposed to make you more aware of what is going on, but the way most media is currently structured, the effect is just the opposite.
There are number of reasons most news is no longer news. The first, which has been well documented, is the descent of news into entertainment, where success is judged solely by eyes and not by content. Network news divisions used to be separate from and untouchable by entertainment divisions, which gave Americans superb and sometimes highly controversial reporting anchored by legends such as Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, and Peter Jennings, with brilliant reporters too numerous to mention. Since network executives did not expect news divisions to be profitable—although they did live in hope—incendiary material from, say, the Vietnam War could be broadcast on newsworthiness alone, coverage that often spurred deeper reading about the events in print media.
But the separation has ended, blurred into irrelevancy, which has made news outlets, once bottom-line immune, into slaves of advertisers. News programmers must therefore ensure that viewers don’t click off to a different channel because a not especially lurid topic is next up.
But stories sufficiently lurid to keep eyes glued to the screen and thumbs off the keypad are not always that easy to come by. As a result, those items that do qualify, some absolutely newsworthy, such as real time election coverage or House Republicans trying for the eighty-second time to elect a Speaker, have to co-exist with, and are often eclipsed by, silliness, such as Donald Trump’s storming out of the courtroom in the E. Jean Carroll closing arguments.
What we do not get is coverage of stories that may be impactful on the United States and the world but not deemed sexy enough to appeal to a tabloid mentality. When was the last time CNN, MSNBC, or Fox seriously covered a story from South America or Africa or central Asia? The Houthis are currently in the news because they are attacking shipping at the mouth of the Red Sea, a serious threat to the world economy. But the Houthis have been fighting as Iran’s proxy for years and until now rated barely a mention.
It is stunning how little actual news is transmitted during each 24-hour news cycle on the cable networks. Judging from time allocation, it would be easy to conclude that Donald Trump’s latest insulting nickname for Nikki Haley is far more important than Turkey dropping its opposition to Sweden’s membership in NATO.
Unwilling to shift to a story that may not satisfy the thirst for sensationalism, especially when competitors have not, cable news instead offers up a variety of thinly disguised regurgitations dressed up as “analysis.” Sometimes it is an individual would-be expert, but often they employ panels, which allow a series of talking heads to expound endlessly and predictably on every permutation and bit of minutia that they can find on the two or three stories that will dominate an hour’s coverage. CNN often has two separate panels droning on about the same event.
Most of this is meaningless, providing only the illusion of depth. They either tell viewers what they already know, what they’ve already been told many, many times previously, or they explore arcane possibilities that almost certainly will have no real significance.
How many times do we have to listen to Andrew Weissmann or Neal Katyal or Elie Honing or Jonathan Turley parse the wording of a prosecution or defense motion in one of Trump’s many court cases, none of which will have slightest impact on the outcome of the trial, if there ever is a trial? While the start date of each trial is key, is devoting segment after segment to speculating on when that might be a productive use of the network’s time…or ours?
Is it really worth hours of palaver to decide whether Trump’s victories in New Hampshire and Iowa were demonstrations of his strengths or his weaknesses? We’ll find that out in November. Or whether a bunch of lawyers and law school professors think Section 3 of the 14th Amendment will be utilized to get Trump off the ballot? Nine justices will soon tell us. Or whether the New York civil fraud case will cost Trump his businesses? That one will be appealed and go on for years. And what difference does it make if a bunch of “public intellectuals” tell us that abortion will be pivotal in November? Or won’t be? Do they really know something we don’t or are they just guessing…like we are?
Even when the panelists are outstanding, like Van Jones or David Axelrod, I almost never feel as if I’ve learned anything I did not know or could not deduce before.
Then there are the anchors, the Sean Hannitys and Rachel Maddows, who smugly and shamelessly pander to like-minded viewers, again under the veil of providing insight, when all they are actually doing is satisfying their audience’s need to hate their opponents.
This is not simply a “good old days” lament. Beyond that it is trivializing and mind-numbingly repetitive, there are serious consequences to this model of news delivery. The focus on two or three sensational topics and the subsequent beating of them to death at the expense of genuine coverage distorts their importance and limits viewers’ ability to understand what is actually going on both in the nation and in the world. Considering that those who are being manipulated by ratings hungry executives are the same people who will soon go to the polls and decide the future of American democracy, this is a pretty scary state of affairs.
That is not to say there is no quality coverage on cable news, either in straight reporting or by analysts. There is, and quite a bit. The problem is that it often gets buried, and in being buried leaves the viewer unable, without considerable effort, to determine what is important to know and what is not.
For two months now, I have resisted the lure of the screen and instead gotten my news from print and online sources representing all segments of the political arena, particularly from sources whose views I find repellent. I have not noticed any diminution in my knowledge or understanding of events. Quite the reverse.
But I do have a lot more time to do the vacuuming and dusting.