Monday, October 15, 2012

The Television in Everyday Life

Local and network news budgets have each been decreased. Money is what's driving this change, and where news divisions once regarded their calling greater than that with the entertainment division, the liens in between the a couple of were blurred so that audience size and profit drives news decisions to a greater degree than from the past.

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Neil Postman criticizes all of us for allowing ourselves to be enamored of entertainment and titillation towards the thing where we cannot stand to acquire a rational concept alone, without the need of outside stimulation, for more than a minute or so. He sees in this trend the destruction of democratic society, and he feels that television has usually been part of this trend: "Television, as I have implied earlier, serves us most usefully after presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill once it co-opts serious modes of discourse--news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion--and turns them into entertainment packages." This can be precisely what tabloid television has done. Pseudo-news shows replace genuine news shows; pseudo-documentaries replace actual documentaries; and the shouting of Morton Downey Jr. or the confrontational tactics of Geraldo Rivera replace reasoned discourse and analysis.

This has not been the only illustration once tabloid television has generated controversy by not playing by the supposed rules of television or by bending those rules to suit the moment. Indeed, several of these shows look to court that sort of trouble and that kind of challenge, and viewers might be tuning in to see if one more fight will erupt or if excellent taste will again be breached. Geraldo looks to attract viewers who like to live dangerously mainly because he sticks close to the subjects of sex, death, drug addiction, and--as critics charge--himself. Former NBC News president Reuven Frank stated: "Geraldo need to be arrested for exposing himself," a line that Geraldo liked sufficient to produce it the title of his autobiography.

In its famous 1946 Report on Public Assistance Responsibilities of Broadcast Licensees, which came being named the 'Blue Book,' the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) vigorously asserted its view that advertiser influence was responsible for deficiencies in network method offerings.

Barnouw, Erik, The Sponsor: Notes on a Current Potentate. New York: Oxford University Pres, 1978.

--The Columbia Journalism Review in 1990 published a study that found that 18 with the 32 stories analyzed on local newscasts have been inaccurate or misleading, and also the station involved usually created no attempt to right the mistakes. The L.A. Reader published a study that same year that examined a week's worth of stories in that marketplace and that found that stations routinely airing public relations footage provided by corporations without acknowledgment that this was exactly where the stories had been obtained.

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