Winter break is, among other things, a wonderful opportunity to lollygag around and indulge in all the luxuries that a frenetic academic lifestyle denies us. Take television, for instance. I surely was not alone in wasting away precious hours of my break in front of the TV, nor was I alone in tuning in to cable news now and again.
Over the course of those few wretched moments of watching Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, I confirmed in my mind that cable news was indeed awful. From the gloom-and-doom pessimism of CNN to the wretched programming of MSNBC to the flashing, seizure-inducing sensationalism of Fox News, I lost all faith in cable television as a medium for presenting news.
None of this would be worth wasting breath over if not for the fact that so many Americans choose to receive their news from these outlets. After all, channels like Fox News and CNN are prone to sensationalize, reluctant to report all sides of a story, and extremely limited in their scope of coverage. Most distressing is the fact that these networks have virtually cast aside any attempt at objectivism. Of course, Fox News may pay lip service to the concept with its nearly comical “fair and balanced” slogan, and CNN may do likewise, but who doubts that each gives higher priority to pleasing liberals or conservatives than to objectivism?
The underlying problem, though, is not cable news in itself; the real problem lies in the millions of viewers who tune in every day in hopes of hearing the day’s events reported as they want to hear them. There is something horribly wrong with a situation in which liberals tune in to CNN so as to become privy to the latest bad news from Iraq and conservatives flip to Fox in order to hear Sean Hannity parrot the RNC platform.
As a conservative, I condemn Fox News not because it offends my politics, but because it is an embarrassment to the concept of conservatism as well as the concepts of news and journalism. Rather than reporting news (a much less lucrative pursuit), Fox delivers a product that is at once sensationalist, biased, and reliant on personalities (Bill O’Reilly, Geraldo Rivera, Alan Colmes) rather than news to drive ratings. In the end, it more closely resembles a tabloid than the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post.
Several clicks away is CNN, often called the Clinton News Network and not without reason. It seems to follow the old saying that applied (and still applies) to most newspaper reporting: “If it bleeds, it leads.” In watching CNN’s war coverage, seldom will one see a story detailing a military accomplishment or a humanitarian success — and this is not for lack of such events. This deficiency of “good news” is indicative partly of the fact that a positive story does not sell like a negative one, but it owes mostly to CNN’s political bent, for both MSNBC and Fox manage to compile those less-lucrative stories on successes.
In writing this, I do not attempt any call to action, nor do I view this as an “issue” that deserves significant attention. But when something that could be so worthwhile and informative is so egregiously awful, it needs to be said.
Frank Hennick ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in international studies and political science.
