In mid-2012,
just 21% of adults in the U.S. told Gallop they had a “great deal” or “quite a
lot” of confidence in TV news. In 1993, the percentage had been at forty-six.
Ideological differences do not seem to matter (ranging only between 19-22%).
Interestingly, the 18- to 29-year-old group had the most confidence. In terms
of education, the more educated one was, the less likely one was to have a
great deal of confidence. Newspapers did not fare much better, coming in at 25
percent.
By chance, on
the very day I read about the Gallop poll, I came to the conclusion that the Huffington Post must be utterly addicted to the U.S. Presidential campaign—then already at
least a year old and with just less than half a year left. Nearly every
headline seemed to be about something that Mit Romney had said (or not said).
Every little thing was blown up into a major crisis—to the point that I had
come to skip the headlines completely. It occurred to me that the Huffington
Post had lost credibility, at least to me, because of its lack of perspective. The dramatics alone reaffirmed my
decision to get my news from Europe, even concerning what is going on in the United States! Tellingly, very little indeed was being reported concerning the "important" presidential campaigns (Gott sei dank)
Accordingly, I had given up watching any American
news channels or shows in April 2012. I had come to realize that all too often opinion was being sold as news.
All too often, journalists were interviewing other journalists as experts (other than on journalism). Such interviews I would call
journalistic masturbation—fit only for other journalists to watch. Just a week
before the Gallop poll came out, someone casually remarked to me that if
Americans would just watch the news on a European station, they would quickly
realize how far off the reservation the American newscasts and news networks
had wandered in terms of reporting the news.
In addition to
the journalists interviewing other journalists and the “talking heads”
commentators dominating the “news,” the obsessiveness on one particular story
within any given 24 hours news-cycle (and limiting “international news” to two or three countries in the world where the U.S. has a particular interest) can
easily give the viewer the sense that the world is much smaller than it actually is. It is a fallacy to
suppose that the narrowness of coverage means it is more in depth rather than
merely repetitive. Furthermore, one should not assume that the narrowness is for want of enough time in a given broadcast; typically after ten minutes in the evening newscasts of the major non-news networks (i.e, ABC, NBC, and CBS), a magazine format takes over, with "human interest" stories replacing news reports.
In short, television news is broken in the United States, and the journalists are blind to it even as they portray themselves (ironically) as self-appointed
experts (i.e., talking heads) on policy. Because the correction needed is not merely by degree, it is
doubtful that the situation could be rectified without a new infusion of people
in the business. In the meantime, I recommend Deutsche Welle (German and
English versions—webpages and television channels) and TV5 Monde (en francais),
as well as the BBC. Hopefully these
European newscasts won’t follow their American cousins.
Source:
Gallup Politics,
“Americans’ Confidence in Television News Drops to New Low,” July 10, 2012. http://www.gallup.com/poll/155585/Americans-Confidence-Television-News-Drops-New-Low.aspx
