I wasn't surprised when I heard that Dan Rather was stepping down as anchor for the CBS Evening News. The man is 73, and more importantly, he was central in the recent scandal in which CBS erroneously reported that President Bush received special treatment during his time in the National Guard. This report, rushed onto the air before it was properly vetted, was based on documents that turned out to be fake.
Regardless of the extent to which his career has been sullied by that fiasco, it is important to remember that Rather has been a successful and trusted reporter for decades. According to last week's Philadelphia Inquirer, Rather's news career goes back to the 1960s, and he was appointed as the evening news anchor in 1981. Since then, Rather has witnessed the decline into near uselessness of network news, a decline that can only be reversed if the U.S. government subsidizes the news programming of the major networks.
It should be obvious to anyone who watches that the evening news isn't really news anymore. It's primarily entertainment, a far cry from the dry -- but useful and educating -- format of yesteryear. An increased focus on ratings and advertising revenue, combined with heightened competition from cable stations like CNN and Fox News, have created an environment where real, legitimate news does not get covered. Anyone who wants to be presented with the news in an unbiased, fully informative way has a stake in fixing this system.
First of all, let me just state that there is nothing inherently wrong with news-as-entertainment. It is, quite obviously, what people want to watch, and in a capitalist society, that is more than enough reason to produce a good and have it flourish in the marketplace. However, the problem is when "infotainment" forces real information into the dark corners of the world where normal people don't have easy access.
If any of you saw a recent episode of South Park, you know what I'm talking about. In this episode, the main characters run a school news program, but they are being run off the air by a kid who makes a show that is just footage of pets doing cute things. In order to try and beat his ratings (a whopping 14 viewers), the kids stray from their old format, ending up with a show called something like Sexy Action School News, which features, among other things, dancing panda bears. The one kid that quietly wants to continue doing a real news show is shouted down, because his way will get them kicked off the air.
Obviously South Park is slight hyperbole, but the problem of news programming having to dumb down and jazz up is a real one. My plan to fix this is very simple: Have the government sponsor the network news each day. Don't worry, I'm not advocating Communist Russia-style propaganda, which is why the government should have absolutely no part in, or influence over, the actual production of the news. Instead, it would simply foot the bill, and leave all the rest safely in the hands of the network producers.
If the government gives each studio an equal amount of money -- enough to cover the half-hour or hour a night for news programs -- then the studios won't have to worry about the ratings for these shows. Ratings are, in essence, simply proxies for how many people watch each show, and thus how much the studio can charge its advertisers for commercial time. Higher ratings mean more money, and in the cutthroat world of television, ratings are God.
But ratings have no business being a factor in news programming. Some news is boring to watch -- that's just a fact. But it's still important, and under the current system, relevance takes a back seat to entertainment value, because that's the only way networks can make money. It leads to, for example, election coverage that focuses almost exclusively on the "horse race" aspect, and shuns more complex issues (which, I think we can all agree, are more important for the voters to hear about).
Under my system, the networks don't have to worry about the news being entertaining. They just have to worry about it being good. Their expenses are all covered, and therefore they don't have to run ads in order to keep the shows afloat. In fact, it's better if the news is devoid of ads entirely. That way, there is absolutely no incentive to neglect importance for entertainment. Audiences get the best of both worlds: relevant news and eight more minutes of it.
Quality news programming is a public good, and public goods by definition are things that everyone needs but no one wants to pay for. That's why we have taxes and a government in charge of things like paving the roads. Having an informed electorate is a necessity in a modern world that is increasingly complex, but is impossible for the marketplace to support on its own. Therefore, the government should step in and compensate the networks in exchange for the solemn pledge that they will faithfully run news programming each night. Hopefully, by the time Rather's replacement retires, network news can be a useful public service again.
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