For those who watched last week’s episode of South Park, you will remember a stinging commentary on Glenn Beck and Fox News. However, sadly enough, this is the state of most television news organizations today, left and right.
Rather than giving the American people the facts that they need to make an informed decision, today’s television news networks sensationalize and exaggerate every story, big or small. Whenever I happen to turn on CNN, Fox News or CNBC, I usually find that they are covering scandalous and exciting stories of little relevance, about obscure topics and useless events.
While they could be properly informing the American people about the current state of the health care bill in the Senate, or nuclear relations with Iran, we instead learn of numerous sex scandals around the country and how much John F. Kennedy’s autograph went for at an auction. Neither of these stories is relevant to anyone but the people directly affected. Also, some of these stories are private personal issues that I am sure those negatively affected do not want making national headlines.
One of the biggest problems in televised news today is the problem of ratings. At some point, the major news networks decided that they were going to become dependent on ratings because they were not making enough money, and they therefore became more like television shows rather than news broadcasts. These networks now only cover those stories that will get them the highest ratings and have the most shock value. However, the most important stories and those that matter most to all Americans are not covered properly — they are not covered enough, but more importantly they are not covered in the depth that is needed for people to completely understand the issue or event.
There are some programs such as “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” that do give Americans the facts, but these are publicly-funded by organizations like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They do not depend on ratings, so they can therefore present the facts as objectively as possible. “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” spends one hour each week on the most important national and international news stories. While it covers fewer topics, it covers them more comprehensively than any television news network could even dream of. As an added bonus, the top story of the week is often an international story of great importance, a story that would not earn the high ratings that other networks are looking for. This concentration on ratings is one of the largest contributors to the pathetically misinformed American population today.
But there is another significant and alarming problem with television news networks today, and that is political and ideological bias in the news. The worst offender, as most would agree, is Fox News, which claims to be objective and unbiased while having a ridiculous right-wing slant that plagues every program on the network. It claims in its primetime broadcast to be balanced and fair-minded, but it is clearly and ludicrously slanted to the right. Even the supposed “experts,” such as Bill Bennett, that are on its programs are conservative and are historically involved with former Republican governments or organizations.
While CNN and MSNBC do have a left-wing bias, they do what they can to keep it out of their prime time broadcasts, and the other programs with a clear bias do not claim to be neutral, as all of Fox News’ programs seem to. Wolf Blitzer’s primetime broadcast on CNN does its best to keep from having a liberal slant and additionally does not consistently claim to have no bias. He gives the news, and while it is mostly underdeveloped and superficial, it is usually not prejudiced.
Americans today often wonder why there is so little being done politically, and people are so utterly misinformed about America’s most important issues — I say it’s caused by our television news networks. We need the straight facts presented in the most objective manner possible to become properly informed about national and international issues. Ratings need to be eliminated as a concern when presenting the news, or many news networks are destined to become no more than propaganda outlets.