Would people be better off without TV news?

[Whispersecret]

I often listen to a man on talk radio whom I admire greatly, Dennis Prager. He is a refreshing and much needed voice of reason and logic and morality in this insane world. He even thinks that pornography has value. (Thought I'd mention that because this IS Literotica, after all.)

One of his topics today was about television newscasting. His opinion is that people are better off getting their news from magazines, radio, and newspapers. His last caller made a point that I thought summed it up. She said that she had found that people who got their news from TV were far more fearful of strangers, the world, anything and everything, than people she knew who didn't watch it.

I tend to agree with her. It seems like they're always pointing out some new horrible danger to me--something else I have to worry about eating, touching, buying, breathing, etc. I don't watch TV news anymore, mainly because of this, and because they pay far too much attention to sensational stories, designed--not to inform--but to get people to watch the newscast.

What is your opinion?

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

"TV news is bad" is too broad a statement to agree or disagree with. As a whole, almost all local news shows are inflamatory, big on things like car chases and anythig else they happen to have tape on, and are increasingly forced to supplant real news stories for "special reports" that are really just lead-ins for the same Network's upcoming TV movie. But CNN is a must and CNN International is even better. ABC World News Tonight is great, and Meet The Press is important. I hate much of TV news now, but I find that newspapers can be just as misleading. You really have to pick and choose those news sources that you trust -- whatever their media.

 

[Laurel]

I skim Yahoo News, Wired, the Industry Standard, FoxNews, and a couple other sites on a daily basis. I've been getting my news from the web for a couple of years (and it's much better than it used to be). If I find a story that interests me, I can look it up on several different news sites and get a good sense of what's actually happening. I now find TV news to be VERY shallow. When 60 seconds is given to cover a story like the New York cops' refusal to stop women from being attacked, or 30 seconds is given to the China situation, the resulting newscast becomes a completely useless string of images and soundbites, devoid of any REAL information. And then they have to to conclude the newscast with a five minute bit on some sick puppy being adopted...barf! I mean! I dig animals, but I don't watch the news to see fluffy feel-good crap. I'm sure they're trying to counter criticisms that all they report is "bad" news, but if they tried to inform rather than inflame they wouldn't need the puppy story... No wonder people have such lame opinions! When they're seeing the world through their 6pm news, how could they be expected to have balanced, informed views on anything?

[This message has been edited by Laurel (edited 06-14-2000).]

 

[Siren]

 

[Guest]

I don't know why but I've never really paid too much attention to the news - tv, radio or newspapers. Obviously if there's something big going on that extends into normal scheduling - like the Lockerby Aircrash or Princess Diana's death - I'll be drawn into it. But, other than that, I never even think to put the news on. I don't get any newspapers delivered, so the only time I get the news is a little 1 minute bulletin every hour on night-time radio, if I happen to have that on.

I often make a fool of myself, 'cause I don't know what's happening in the world but I'm fairly happy most of the time.

My Dad and my brother are the complete opposite. They watch all the news discussion programmes and read lots of papers. My brother even gets some of the American papers.

They're both fairly happy most of the time, too, so this doesn't really prove anything.

But I think too much negative information can give you a distorted view of life. You start becoming fatalistic (I don't think that's the word I'm looking for). You can end up with a self-fulfilling prophesy - where people expect the worst out of life, so that's what they get. I think that hearing about too much misfortune can make you a bit cynical and pessimistic. It's especially depressing hearing about horrible things going on in the world that you have no control over. You feel a bit helpless.

It'd be better if the news was a lot more balanced than it is. Life isn't all bad or all good, it's somewhere in between.

Of course, good news never sells as many papers.

 

[Golden]

Whoa big topic! May I wade in with my old journalist’s hat on? [er, old hat, that is not old journalist!]

There are three problems with TV news which make it unreliable if it is your only source because it is by its nature an unbalanced product; not biased per se, but unbalanced …

TV isn’t alone, but merely a great deal worse than newspaper news because the problems are exaggerated by TV’s peculiarities:

1. TV demands that news be visually arresting; so you will get longer segments on visual stories and shorter ones on stories which don’t lend themselves well to visual treatment. By comparison the biggest story on page one of your newspaper I(serious newspapers anyway) will be the story the Editor thinks is most important or most newsworthy

2. The logical extension of this is: news on TV is the news that the TV company has got footage of or a camera at. It is basic for any newspaper to get a reporter to any good story or get a piece from the news agency that covered it. TV finds this much harder – so you will find on TV any night both a number of news stories which got aired on radio many hours earlier or were in that morning’s papers but it took this long to get video, or you find stories missing or barely covered because there is no video. TV almost NEVER breaks news unless it happens to be really lucky.

3. The TV time slot is rigid and surprisingly short. If a half a half hour news segment has no ads and no long pauses while they switch to and from video footage or camera , it will contain a maximum of around 5000 words. You get that within two pages of some newspapers! So there really is not much news on TV!

Then there is a fourth problem where bias is real. TV News coverage of sports events – and of some non-sports event too – is almost entirely based on what access rights they have. So the TV co which does NOT stage, let’s say, the Olympics is going to have no or only scant coverage of Olympic performances in its sports news. It will put minor sports (the ones it has been gamely broadcasting against the Olympics on the other channel) further up the play-list in sports news broadcasts.

In TV’s defence – some news stories really do best on TV; especially if they are staged and timed (e.g. man walks on moon) or unbelievably dramatic and TV happened to be there (various gunshots aimed at Presidents etc or the bombing of Baghdad by cruise missiles), or because the video footage is emotionally arresting, such as famine reports from Africa (starving babies with big soulful eyes etc) (here usually the film is canned long before, so as to allow lots of time for creative editing and scripting ….) Or because the sheer beauty and impact rely on video

So what’s the answer? If you really want to know what is going on, listen to radio, read newspapers and check out the better web-sites. Watch the TV news when you know there is a big story – a disaster crash, an assassination, an adventure… but if TV news is all you consume then you should expect to be ignorant of what is going on in most of the world, and behindhand with what you do know!

I should add this is true of north America, UK, the “white” former colonies … Europe, quite a bit of Asia … and probably most of the rest of the word, but I’ve only watched TV in about 40 countries, not all 200 or whatever!

 

[Weird Harold]

The more sources you access to get your news, the less biased it's going to be.

During the Gulf War, I watched every bit of US Television coverage I could, kept my radio tuned to the local all news station, and dug out my short wave receiver and tuned into Radio Moscow, BBC World Service, and Two different Australian shortwave news services, to get the international viewpoint. There were several others shortwave broadcasts I happened across occasionally as well, but couldn't tune in consistantly.

I generally get my news from CNN Headline news, and CNN RAdio News. If somethng catches my attention of being worthy of paying more attention to I'll check out other sources.

Like Roger, I'm usually woefully ignorant about what's happening, because I prefer having the history channel, Cartoon Channel, or ESPN Sports Radio for background noise.

 

[Fallen Angel]

Have you ever noticed how the world and you get along just fine when you don't see or hear the news for a week or two? Go camping in the montains without a tv or radio and surprise you do just fine. The world is still there when you come back, not much better or much worse.

I think that one of the problems we face today is being overwhelmed with too much information. We get to worring about things that have we have little or no control of and let things in our life slide that we can change just because thay seem minor compared to the big problems out there.

If the news is stressing you out then turn it off. You won't miss much.