The ‘News’ Smokescreen / Television: The Opium of The People

There’s no shortage of evidence regarding the ‘dumbing down’ of the news media, the diminishing quality and standard of journalism and the lack of depth of news coverage. It’s symptomatic of the vapid, vacuousness of most television. However, this last week has served to remind me, in bold neon graphics with a portentous theme tune punctuated with orchestral strikes, just how bad things have become.

After BBC’s ‘Breakfast’ became a lifestyle show with a few brief news headlines thrown in, I switched to Sky News in the mornings, not because I thought it was great quality news coverage, but because it did at least provide news coverage, as well as weather forecasts and the like when advertised. The trouble is, Sky News now looks like ‘Brasseye’, only without the levels of literacy or the sense of its own absurdity.

I can accept the difficulties a ’slow news day’ presents the producers and all involved, not least of all the journalists. However, I can’t buy that there’s ever a time when there is only one story worthy or reporting taking place in the entire world. To take a couple of recent examples, Raoul Moat’s stand-off against the police and the rescue of the Chilean miners both received blanket rolling coverage on the UK’s 24-hour news channels. Culminating in the fugitive murderer’s suicide, the former was less ‘news at it unfolded’ and more live action televisual voyeurism. Did we actually need to see very little, shot in night vision, for several hours on end? What did the presence of continuous footage as it happened, accompanied by endless fill and speculation from the on-scene reporter actually give the viewers? Or more to the point, what did it give them that they needed?

The miners’ rescue took on an almost gameshow-like quality as both Sky and the BBC added a counter on screen, the points clocking up each time another miner popped above ground. All done in real-time of course, with endless repetitive, empty commentary and replays of the previous men as they emerged from the collapsed mine, even making use of split screen to allow for re-runs from an hour before without having to miss a second of the drama as it unfolded in real time. The miners were repeatedly hailed as ‘heroes,’ naturally, although as one miner from another dangerous mine in Chile said, it’s not heroism, but doing a job to put food on the table. Still, from the comfort of our centrally heated homes munching on hot toast with scrambled eggs before driving off to a comfortable air-conditioned office, most things that require physical labour and risk probably appear heroic. The context is all.

Fast forward a few days, and it’s a slow news day. So the Chilean president’s visit to England, bearing gifts of pieces of rock for the Queen is the main headline and speculation over funding cuts the government may or may not be about to announce occupy the majority of airtime. So, to compensate the lack of stories, Sky News ran an article on a Guinness World Record breaking chocolate bar. With the headlines on a fifteen-minute cycle, it soon became tedious. One of the newsreaders commented to another that the producers were asking her to drop the article, but that she thought it was important.

It matters not whose decision it was. The point is, the news has long been full of these fluffy fillers, but now, alongside celebrity ‘news,’ such trivia seems to be slowly shunting the serious news aside in terms of coverage. Moreover, while giving space to pointless non-news, and providing disproportionately lengthy coverage which is startling lacking in substance to other stories, the question is ‘where is the other news?’

What are they not telling us? TV news – as well as Internet news and most popular newspapers – is all about the headlines. There’s the occasional ‘expert’ providing some soundbite opinion, and this is intended to give weight to the story. Most viewers and readers probably accept it at face value, but that’s really all there is to accept: it’s all about surface, appearance. A thirty-second interview with an ‘expert’ with dubious credentials is not the same s detailed analysis. How often is there any background or context given to a news event? How often are the real implications of a news item, such discussed? I’m not talking about the headline ‘statistics’, like the suggestion that if the limit on the tuition fees British universities can charge is removed, then tuition fees could soar to ‘up to £12,000 a year’ and ‘the average student will graduate with £30,000 of debt’, either. Precisely how are these figures calculated?

This last week, the burying of the real news with trivia and tabloid tittle-tattle was illustrated even more sharply by the blanket coverage and speculation over Wayne Rooney’s decision to leave Manchester United. While everyone (and I mean everyone – the office was buzzing solidly for days over the story) worked themselves into a lather over this ‘gobsmacking’ turn of events, the government slipped out an emergency budget that will shaft the entire nation for decades to come. Half a million jobs are to go, and yet all the attention is on some whore-fucking Neanderthal who earns in a week more than many will earn in twenty years? Something is seriously wrong. Of course, I’m not suggesting that the timing of the two events was in any way planned or co-ordinated, but….

The dissemination of news is a fine balancing act. Too much bad news or detail and most viewers will turn off, declaring the coverage ‘boring.’ And in the current climate, it’s all about ratings. Ratings (indirectly) bring revenue. So it’s important to have mass appeal, and that means the tabloid-readers are as much the target audience as the serious broadsheet readers and business-types – if not more so. The business types are too busy working, welded to their Blackberry to watch television, and when they do have time, they want the headlines, fast. Every fifteen minutes, in fact. Not every hour, having to wait for analysis and waffle. But this need for swift, readily-digestible bite-size chunks comes at the expense of both depth and range.

So, for the perfect news programming, here’s the strategy. Heap on the stories that will evoke panic and outrage: scare the viewers, and anger them enough to grumble to their friends and work colleagues (but not so much that they’ll actually do anything: we don’t want a world in which everyone downs tools and takes to the streets every time they’re a bit disgruntled, like in France), while countering them with stories of what the government is doing for them to make their lives better or safer. That way, they’ll stay in line and remain fearful while chuntering but not acting or protesting. Toss in just enough trivia to entertain and prevent the viewers from becoming completely depressed, and so after a grouse about this that and the other, they’ll be able to chat about the cute animal story and then move onto the last night’s soaps. The status quo is maintained, and life goes on while the world spirals deeper into chaos, recession and carnage.