Column: Good ratings don't mean good news
Published Feb. 19, 2010
Several years ago, I decided I would no longer use television as a news source.
Although I could sift through the political bias, the simple fact of the matter was various news outlets didn't have news to report.
Essentially, correspondents would frequently be "breaking" stories, which amounted to telling the viewers they were waiting for more information to emerge, during which time they would aimlessly speculate.
Moreover, several of the discussion items would involve things that weren't actually newsworthy but were designed to tug at viewers' heartstrings.
Therefore, I reasoned I would wait for news to be published in print form before I paid attention.
Remarkably, I have been able to stay relatively informed since making this decision, while avoiding the streams of gibberish gushing from cable television.
Shortly after his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama urged members of Congress to stop tuning into cable television for news and to think independently.
I don't think our elected officials really use these media sources to gauge public opinion, but Obama raised a valid point. Essentially, the mass media have all but killed meaningful intellectual discussion in the political arena. Most of the significant public policy items debated by Congress are complex, and difficult issues require a great deal of thought and discussion.
Unfortunately, personalities on networks, such as Fox and CNN, prefer to minimize these multifaceted issues to a few sound bytes or partisan rants.
What's more, these people are journalists with limited or non-existent qualifications who proceed to pontificate on matters on which they have no authority.
However, a great number of people, in fact, do watch the news, and the careless action of these networks has an impact on the public.
People begin to form misguided opinions they believe to be informed by fact. They become angered when their representatives reach different conclusions, even though their elected officials are almost undoubtedly better informed.
This bleeds into a separate but related problem.
This atmosphere of instant gratification and misinformation causes constituents to believe they can single-handedly contact their representative and order him or her how to vote on any given issue, even though this is contrary to the premise of representative government.
Our elected officials have entire offices devoted to researching policy options and advising the official how to vote. The segment you saw on CNN or Fox doesn't make you an expert (or, frequently, even informed).
We see this problem on a larger scale during campaign season.
Instead of being able to discuss the issues on a deeper level, candidates must dumb down their opinions to a few words or phrases. In turn, this makes it difficult for those of us who are truly interested in learning about the candidates to discover their true thoughts.
Ultimately, the core problem is media outlets are, at base, most interested in ratings and generating a profit.
Therefore, the practices that create these outcomes are utilized most frequently. It seems these practices include not only pieces that aren't newsworthy, such as celebrity news, but also giving people what they want to hear, rather than an objective report of the news.
The latter of these has contributed most to the rise of questionable news reporting.
It's natural an individual person would want to have their views validated through news that agrees with them, but it's irresponsible of the media to provide this while sacrificing the education of the public.
It's time for these networks to recognize though they are a business with an end goal of producing a profit, they have a social responsibility to keep the public informed in an unbiased manner.