A few weeks ago I agreed in passing with one of Kevin’s periodic dismissals of cable news channels as not worthy of that name, as they are purveyors of opinion and propaganda and worse. It was not the place to give a more nuanced take on cable news, but I have been wanting to, and will briefly now.
There was a time when I got most of my news from CNN, but some years into the Bush Administration and its unnecessary war, and CNN’s complete spiral down into theatrical and empty yelling matches, I opted out. For a while I recorded Newshour every day and watched it when I could, but often found that by the time I did it was already 5 hours or more old, so I would update online. Soon I found I could get better and more timely news solely online - which paradoxically meant for the most part that I now get my news they way my father did before me, from newspapers - though I don’t have to wait to get it delivered in the morning, and I can read three or four from around the country and world. I now pay for an online subscription to the NYT, which I use many times each day, and max out my free access to the WaPo and LAT. I also regularly read stories from NPA, the AP and BBC, and The Hill and Politico, supplemented by long form journalism produced by places like the Atlantic, New Republic, Economist and Vanity Fair. Unless it is literally breaking news that happens to break while I am watching MSNBC’s live coverage (which is for a half hour early in the morning and 30 to 60 minutes around 6:30 or 7:00 in the evening) I almost never learn about anything in the news for the first time from a television source. I do spend more time (for the last couple of years) watching Cable News than I used to, and almost always it is MSNBC. The programs I watch (mostly the evening shows) provide relatively little of what I used to consider a traditional newscast. Clearly there is a liberal slant to the POV, and an even more transparent and self-conscious anti-Trump commitment. Much of this is not news, it is opinion and analysis- and the quality varies greatly, from thoughtful, informed and penetrating to superficial and pandering. For this kind of opinionated analysis I get the most from Rachel Maddow, who at least a once or twice a week dives deeply into the mountain of information and surfaces with a complex and relevant story that illustrates something more than just the headline of the day. She is of course very much a voice from the left. But I find that MSNBC (and, I gather CNN does much the same thing these days, though they have left such a bad taste in my mouth that I rarely watch them any more. Perhaps Fox News does something similar as well in their own way) provides something other than analysis (done well or poorly), opinion and propaganda. Its bread and butter seems to be panels of actual newspaper reporters, brought on to actually discuss the day’s news. There is relatively little yelling and melodramatics on these panels (though I’m sure Trumpests would be irritated by the amount of head shaking that does on about the latest outrageous thing uncovered about the Administration). I find often that reporters who have written stories in the NYT or WaPo or Atlantic or VF or AP that I have already read are on for 10 to 15 minutes and able to not just summarize their story but put it into some perspective - often relating it to stories they published the previous week or month or year. They are often on panel with other reporters who have published similar or related stories, and the panel then provides a means of fitting together pieces that form part of a puzzle. By far the best program for this kind of thing is Brian Williams “The 11th Hour”, which comes on at 8:00 pm in California, but I guess 11:00 pm on the East Coast (hmm, I just got that). I know Williams has come in for a lot of scorn on this list and other places for his self-aggrandizing memory illusions (which I have tried to contextualize in the past), but his fall from grace has made him a bargain for MSNBC - a top rank broadcaster operating in a less charged environment, with more time to actually explore the day’s events. And coming at the end of the day, when many reporters have filed their stories for the next morning already, he actually has a head start on tomorrow’s news. I said I rarely learn new things from TV news anymore, but when I do it is because a newspaper reporter is on Williams’ show discussing a story that has just posted on their website and will be in the next day’s paper. So, yes, I agree with Kevin that cable news is not a place that provides much independent, reliable, objective news, and it is rife with opinion and pandering. But I do not agree with dismissing cable news as worthless, and (at least on MSNBC, and I suspect on CNN as well) in recent years cable news has become a place where you can find informed and fairly serious and nuanced discussion of the very best journalism being currently produced by newspaper and magazine reporters. If I ran MSNBC the main change I would make would be the addition of three hour-long actual newscasts (morning, midday and evening), which would also give them some more objective news voices to handle big breaking stories. -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
