September 30, 2004

News as Entertainment

Television news isn't about information dispersal. It's about entertainment. Years ago, an economics professor (can't remember his name) at an IHS conference bestowed this insight on me, and I have never watched television the same since.

The CBS News draft story is a mini-movie. There's the protagonist, Beverly Cocco who's "absolutely scared" and "petrified" about an impending draft. There's the villian, President Bush who's sent troops to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and who vows to continue waging war on America's enemies. With the villian is his lackey. Here, it's the Selective Service Director Jack Martin who admits a draft could begin six months after a law was passed. (Neither Kerry nor Bush have said they will reinstate the draft.)

Now, CBS News could have put in the much-needed fact that the e-mails scaring people about the draft contain dubious information at best. They didn't, not because of some anti-Bush or anti-government bias but because it would tone down the story's tension. Viewers wouldn't have a "wow" moment if the story was about a military draft that no one of any significance says will happen. Such a story would just make Beverly Cocco look like a paranoid kook. Putting paranoid kooks on the evening news is not good for rating (but do it on Jerry Springer and you have a hit).

The evening news isn't just the only place where news is entertainment. There are the talking head yap fests like Crossfire, Hannity & Colmes, and Hardball. After watching Crossfire for a few years I realized the point of the show wasn't to inform the viewer. The guests have their talking points they stick to and all participants just try to make their ideological foes look like extremist wackos. That's not news, it's professional wrestling in front of a Washington, D.C. backdrop.

For those if us news junkies news is entertainment. We have an unsatiable desire to be in the know and up to date with all that happening around us. We click on Instapundit and Drudge many times an hour to keep up. Many of us have gone so far as to write weblogs to quench our thirst for news.

What I'm getting as is news as entertainment isn't inherently bad. It just means the viewer or reader needs to maintain an assumption when consuming media: sometimes the story is more important than the substance; there's usually more than meets the eye.

P.S. Here's what Google thinks when you type in "television news entertainment." I know it's only the result of an algorithm so take it with a grain of silicon.

"INDC Interviews the CBS Evening News" [via JustOneMinute]

UPDATE: I don't know if Glenn Reynolds has ever explicitly dubbed news as entertainment, but this quote makes me think we're of like mind:

Unless Kerry melts into a puddle on the floor, the media spin will be that he did well and helped his campaign. This is for two reasons. One is, as Newsweek' Evan Thomas remarked, that the press "wants Kerry to win."

The other, of course, is that they want the race to remain interesting -- which is to say, a race -- for another month, and it'll be hard to do that if everybody's pronouncing Kerry doomed after tonight.