The scene is Broadcast News, a movie about television news. As producer Holly Hunter looks on in journalistic horror, reporter William Hurt stops tape during a poignant interview, requests a retake of an "insert"—a shot of the interviewer's reaction—and, precisely on cue, sheds 100 percent phony tears. ...
The scene is News3 Nightside, an actual television newscast. As viewers look on with artificially sweetened sadness—prodded by music so melancholy you wonder how they stuffed a thousand string players inside your 42-inch Hitachi—co-anchor Nina Radetich interviews Dawn Prendes, the wet-eyed, emotional widow of slain Metro Sgt. Henry Prendes, still understandably distraught two months after the shooting, especially when helped along by a reporter's questioning.
Radetich does not cry. But she does nod gravely, our surrogate sympathizer to a woman in pain.
Certainly, to feel anything less than sympathy toward Dawn Prendes is to be a heartless bastard. But what she tells us is that she misses her husband. Well, of course she does. And, of course, no one needed to be told that. It's not news, it's voyeurism.
Ah, but here's the kicker: It's a "News3 Exclusive." They have it. The other guys don't. And that is the real news.
The tear-stained Prendes interview tops the newscast—trumping the very latest developments in the G-Sting trial involving lawmakers in whom we invest our public trust—on the channel "Where News Comes First."
Do you know what you're watching? Or, even more critically, what you're not watching? Do you know how to translate television news into real life? Have you confused the sense of community that local TV news purports to promote with the feeling of alienation it creates?
"The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were."
Two things to consider in tandem:
1) "Local TV news stories emerged as the most thinly sourced and shallowly reported of any medium studied other than local radio. What's more, the stereotypes about local news seemed to be borne out in the data. Roughly half of all the news hole on local TV newscasts that was not given over to weather, traffic and sports was devoted to crime and accidents. Stories about local institutions, government infrastructure, education and more were generally relegated to brief anchor reads in the middle of the newscast."
That's from a report by Columbia University's Project for Excellence in Journalism, titled "The State of the News Media 2006."
2) "Nevada Per-Pupil Spending Ranks Near the Bottom of a U.S. Census Bureau Report."
That was a 25-second story read by Gary Waddell at 12:13 p.m., on Channel 8's Eyewitness News at Noon, preceded by two crime stories, one accident report, three teasers for national stories and one national story.
(Colleen May did an expanded report on the issue in a later newscast.)
"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."
It's almost too easy, isn't it, mocking local TV news? Like shootin' fish already cookin' in the skillet:
• The clunky co-anchor smiley talk and imbecilic pleas to meteorologists to stop this rain and bring us some sunshine!
• The oxymoronic verbosity of weathercasters who intone that "winds are calm"—just a tip, kids: If "winds are calm" ... there is no wind—and warn us of impending "rain events." (As George Carlin once quipped: "Wow, I hope I can get tickets to that!")
• The self-important setups: "For more on this story," announces a Channel 3 anchor, "we go to Rob McMillan, LIVE in the newsroom."
• The synergistic silliness: Cross-staffing with sister station Channel 8, UPN-14's 10 p.m. sports merely promises the baseball scores—legit news—if you tune into Channel 8 at 11, but finds time for entertainment blather about Usher and celebrity breakups.
• The pointless remotes: Channel 8's Ashanti Blaize, reporting from the scene of a deadly highway accident since cleared, cars zipping by effortlessly behind her.
• The juvenile teasers: Channel 13 reporter Mike Dello Stritto on Action News at 4 guaranteeing salacious details on Mike Galardi's G-Sting testimony on the 5 p. m. newscast—Galardi claimed to have repeatedly received oral sex from Erin Kenny in 2002—but for purposes of 4 p.m., referring only to their "close relationship."
• The tendency toward the gruesome: Fox-5's Lorraine Blanco interviews the wife of a crime victim who "shows us where her husband lay bleeding."
• The terror-teasers: "Are you killing your child? More at 11," and approximately 1.7 million variations on the theme, especially during November, February, May and July sweeps.
• Placing stories featuring newscasters themselves before actual news: Channel 13's Cathy Ray lectures a Bishop-Gorman High School class, slotted on the 4 p.m. newscast at 4:09.
• The relentless, self-promoting sloganeering: "Channel 13 Action News—Breaking News, Solving Problems"; the "First Response" team on Channel 3, always "watching out for YOU!"
• The ethically questionable commingling of news personalities and advertiser promotion: Channel 3 anchors sporting jumbo bags of popcorn and giant sodas, inviting you to join them to celebrate the opening of Red Rock Station's new multiplex during "Channel 3 Night at the Movies."
• The cozy cross-promotion of local affiliate newscasts and their network entertainment division: Channel 8's passion for pieces about crime-scene investigators, which CBS' top-rated CSI: Crime Scene Investigation nicely repays by employing Paula Francis in newscaster cameos, announcing fake crimes; Channel 13's Tricia Kean breaking news about specific prime-time shows—that is, ABC shows such as Lost and Desperate Housewives—being accessible online.
Some, maybe even all of these failings have failed to improve despite the righteous indignation of professional media critics, gaining grudging acceptance as now inherent to the TV news format.
Of course, similar types of charges—purple language, hype over content, the "sex sells" edict—can be hurled at scores of print publications, including this one. A certain bullshit quotient sells every media product. But TV news is unique in its ubiquitousness, its combined wallop by dint of its sheer reach, while dispensing news fragments—partially a function of its severe time constraints—that prioritize the what, when and who (the stuff of headlines) before the why and how (the context that gobbles up precious seconds on the air).
"The medium [has the] ability to influence people's perceptions and conduct more than reality itself ... There is a simple way to test the validity of my thesis. For three months, watch and listen to all the news talk shows, news analyses, documentaries and interview shows you wish; some are excellent. But stop watching TV news during this time and see if your understanding of the world declines, or, as I suspect, improves."
Las Vegas TV news transformed Sgt. Henry Prendes—by all accounts a good man and good cop who gave his life in the line of duty, a risk he was aware of when he signed onto the job—into a folk hero. Police officers, sadly, die every day in large urban cities, but in Vegas, where it is a relative rarity, the Prendes story gifted the locals with the sort of Ultimate Crime Story that TV salivates over, starring unambiguous white-hatted heroes and black-hearted villains.
While the racial divide wasn't explicitly exploited, the facts of the case—Prendes was murdered by a black would-be rapper—fueled the longevity and exposure of the story, tapping white fear of black music viewed as violent. The story climaxed when Prendes' funeral procession and memorial service were carried live by some local stations, recalling images of statesmen's funerals for such world leaders as John and Robert Kennedy, or ex-presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, with newscasters verbally flailing and failing to inject insightful commentary to accompany endless images of a procession crawling along Vegas streets and mourners mingling. But it gave stations bogus bragging rights to a dubious claim: their dedication to you, the viewer, by virtue of their mere presence, if not actual news value.
Beyond the live coverage that afternoon, Sgt. Henry Prendes' funeral deserved to be the top-of-the-newscast piece on every channel that evening. And it was. It didn't deserve to be both.
But while an avalanche of coverage fulfilled the necessary script for the crowning of a hero, an infamous event relied on perhaps deliberate omissions—or at the very least, repertorial laziness—by both local and national media to advance the vilification of cops who nicely fit the roles of monsters in a story that played better in racial reverse.
Flash back to the 1992 LA riots and the videotaped beating of black, PCP-addled motorist Rodney King by white cops. While several of the police officers were no doubt brutal and/or bigoted, all were broad-brushed as racist. What wasn't reported during the solid year that the violent video of the beating was incessantly broadcast is that a few months before the King incident, one of the accused "racist" cops, Stacey Koon, had given emergency mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dying black transvestite prostitute with open sores on his mouth.
Hear about that from TV? Hear about it at all? It took Reason magazine to dig it up.
That's not to smear all TV news with the same cry of agenda-mongering, but to alert you to TV's temptation to paint story narratives, characters and moral lessons in black and white in a world doused in a thousand shades of gray.
"I do not mean to be the slightest bit critical of TV newspeople, who do a superb job, considering that they operate under severe time constraints and have the intellectual depth of hamsters."
When it comes to the news from the tube, exploiting anxiety is always an option. My favorite memory of tele-absurdism dates back to 1995, when I covered local television in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The trio of major affiliate newscasts all sounded frantic warnings of climatological doom—which in Tennessee is a snowstorm. The bell-ringing began early in the week for the "snow event" that was still days away. Yet, amid gorgeous sunshine, Chattanooga's public school system suspended classes three days in advance—only to wake up on the designated "snow day" with a dusting every student's grandmother could have negotiated with ease.
But anticipation of bad weather is merely a prelude to the impact on viewers assaulted, as most studies confirm, by violent crime—a main dish surrounded by side dishes of accidents, bizarro events, natural and manmade disasters and fires—that comprises nearly half the story menu of many newscasts.
"Long-term, we get 'used to it.' Numbness and cynicism replace fear, terror and revulsion. The effects are cumulative, producing what George Gerbner calls the 'Mean World Syndrome,' where viewers perceive the world as a more fearful place than it actually is," writes Paul Klite, executive director of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, in an essay titled "TV News and the Culture of Violence."
"Millions are afraid to go out at night, do not trust their neighbors and feel estranged from society in proportion to their media exposure. ... Violence attracts people's attention and produces a strong emotional reaction that advertisers covet. Marketers call it 'arousal.' Paraphrasing (Marshall) McLuhan, arousal helps move merchandise. Violence, talk of violence and threat of violence are the most effective tools for manipulating people—propagandists from Machiavelli to Mao have known this."
But Klite does offer remedies.
"One—lower the dose of news violence and, as Max Frankel suggests, explain the cruelty, don't just film it. ... Balanced news includes a balance of topics. Two—educate broadcasters about their power for harm and have the industry develop ethical standards for dealing with potentially hazardous materials. Three—require warning labels directly on television broadcasts in the form of prime-time public-service announcements that explain and alert viewers to harmful TV effects. The cycle of exploitive violence on the news must be broken."
"We have substituted facts for knowledge."
An autopsy of three random, recent local TV pieces points up the format's strengths and flaws.
A Channel 8 story about the most dangerous intersection in town—the corner of Trop and Paradise—provided a brief camera pan of the area and a slice of information many viewers might not have known: that drivers' insurance rates, beyond being based on your history of traffic accidents and tickets, are also affected by the zip code in which you live, and your neighbors' driving records, as well. However, the thrust of the story, the perilous intersection, is left incomplete without any discussion of its causes. Is it because of its proximity to McCarran, the Strip, the Hard Rock and the Thomas & Mack, the traffic converging, congealing and congesting around Trop and Paradise? We aren't told.
Another Channel 8 piece, about a bomb threat at McCarran, exposed how pictures can add zero to our understanding. A correspondent and a camera are posed outside a chain-link fence, staring in at a darkened McCarran runway, planes taking off as scheduled, the reporter recapping an old story that was worth half the time and could have been read at the studio. But the phrase "bomb threat," with its visceral power and terrorist implications, seemingly is enough to catapult both correspondent and camera out into the field to underline its sensational appeal.
Conversely, a Channel 3 piece on legit graffiti art ruined by taggers Downtown on First Friday, is perfectly illustrated and reported, the vivid pictures of the "bad" graffiti scrawled all over the "good" graffiti a sad and effective background to the baffled and disappointed First Friday officials interviewed. It provokes genuine sympathy and even anger in viewers.
"Television has a real problem. They have no page two. Consequently every big story gets the same play and comes across to the viewer as a really big, scary one."
By sponsoring AIDS walks, breast-cancer-awareness lunches, diabetes fund-raising and other good-cause activities, local TV can look like answered prayers to a town in need of community activists—a profile they passionately promote on the air. But how connected to the community can a local newscast be, based on its central function—delivering local news?
Time random stories on their newscasts. I did. On average, nearly half came in under 30 seconds, with only a scattered few stretching more than a minute. (As Bill Maher remarked to Sen. Joseph Biden last week on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher: "I know you've been criticized for talking too long, but I want to tell the American public that sometimes it takes more than 30 seconds to explain something until it makes sense.")
In fairness, such brevity is attributable to the fallout of the modern TV age, with its intense pressure to keep your forefinger off the 1,000-channel universe packed inside your remote. But that broad, yet shallow approach sends a message of superficial caring, of a tie to community concerns that is tenuous at best, undermining viewer loyalty and confidence.
Nor does the urgency of local issues always guarantee them a newscast's coveted top slot. If a national story packs more visual oomph—say, California mudslides—than a picture-poor piece on local economics, education or legislation, it will claim the telecast's lead position.
But it may be TV news' more invisible pull that most ironically distances local viewers from the sense of community news folk imagine they're cementing.
"Electronic media have become an environment of their own—to the list of neighborhood and region and continent and planet we must add TV as a place where we live," writes media observer Bill McKibben in his book The Age of Missing Information. "And the problem is not that it exists—the problem is that it supplants. Its simplicity makes complexity hard to fathom."
McKibben argues that TV on local terms supplants the human need for person-to-person contact, its virtual world an attractive alternative because unlike family, friends and neighbors—who, as fallible humans, can be unreliable—the news always promises to be there for you at 4, 5, 6 and 11, every day, telling you everything you need to know (or so you're assured) to get you through to tomorrow.
"TV gives us infinite information about choice—it celebrates choice as a great blessing, which it is, and over the course of a single day it lays out a nearly infinite smorgasbord of options," McKibben writes. "As much as it loves choice, though, it doesn't actually believe in choosing. It urges us to choose everything—this and this and this as well. And it does nothing to help create communities that might make wise choices possible on a scale large enough to make a difference."
"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness."
Some things, frighteningly, remain constant. In 2002, Columbia University's Project for Excellence in Journalism report on local television news—titled "On the Road to Irrelevance"—concluded the following:
"Local TV news continues ... to be a surrogate rubbernecker, taking us to crime scenes, murder trials and traffic accidents, where we can do little but gawk. Not even a generation-defining event like September 11 has changed that."
Spin your remote through the locals every morning, noon and night, and you'll be hard-pressed to find evidence that the four passing years have rendered that report obsolete.
So, a cautionary note:
Most viewers are not naïve, yet it's easy, given the passive nature of watching the medium, to be psychologically neutralized, rather than acutely discerning and dissecting the spell cast by the hocus-pocus box. TV news, at its core, is still a product of a dream machine, a seductive surge of sound and pictures that flows by in frantic fragments, not unlike the often-confusing nocturnal journeys our minds make as our bodies rest. Its cumulative effect—especially when the 4 p.m. news slips seamlessly into the 4:30 report that shifts smoothly into the 5 p.m. edition, all with fly-by bits of information blurring into a stream-of-consciousness pinwheel—can leave viewers less with strong recall of individual stories than an overall impression of a world in chaos. What can result is a vague feeling of unrest, rather than a specific grasp of information.
Under that influence, even if you attempt to watch with a critical eye—and we often switch on TV while multitasking around the house or office, using the medium as aural wallpaper—it's far too easy to accept what's most important, somewhat important and least important in town that day based simply on how news directors stack the stories in that day's telecast.
If it's the lead story, it must be the most crucial, right? 'Fraid not, friend. Sometimes it is, but more often, it's simply the most colorful, visual, sensational and loudest, its bombardment of images easy to mistake as consequential to your life when it's merely entertainment for the senses gussied up as news—while the more cerebral, picture-free, mid-cast piece on sales tax carries more potential impact on your everyday life.
This is one passive activity that demands active monitoring—and intellectual selectivity—to yield positive results.
Don't just watch. Think.