Comments on: On whom the bell tolls… http://narrowcampus.com/2008/12/11/on-whom-the-bell-tolls/ The skinny on college life in Boston, from Babcock Street to Kenmore square... and beyond. Fri, 01 May 2009 14:25:10 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: RT http://narrowcampus.com/2008/12/11/on-whom-the-bell-tolls/#comment-135 RT Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:14:33 +0000 http://narrowcampus.com/?p=578#comment-135 This is preposterous. The function of the news media is not to attract viewers for their advertisers, that's the function of Law & Order. Catering to the lowest common denominator is always always always going to net more viewers - does that mean that MSNBC ought to dedicate hours of programming to showing footage of Miami Beach during spring break? These people are supposed to be journalists, not television pimps. They are smart enough to know that what they are saying is bogus: with enough marketing, you can find an audience for anything. The job of the media is to educate us, but not everyone is smart enough to know that they need to be educated. Blaming the public is nothing but a cover for their shameful incompetence (with all-too-few exceptions in the case of PBS and Knight Ridder/McClatchy) in covering so much of what matters, in the elections and especially the run-up to the Iraq War. Your responsibility is to communicate what's important. If you can do that in an interesting way, that's great, but if you can't, that doesn't give you license to replace it with a story about Sarah Palin's clothes. Should we stop teaching students about the Constitution because the signing of it wasn't sexy or dramatic enough? And, good luck finding anything close to substance on the 24-hour channels. They have long been content to let two opposing sides argue about what color the sky is and then tell the viewer that there is not enough time in the segment to settle the question. That we continue to have this debate about some nebulous responsibility on the part of the citizen makes me wonder if the old news media is even trying to endure. They certainly haven't offered a good reason for why they should in years. This is preposterous. The function of the news media is not to attract viewers for their advertisers, that’s the function of Law & Order. Catering to the lowest common denominator is always always always going to net more viewers – does that mean that MSNBC ought to dedicate hours of programming to showing footage of Miami Beach during spring break?

These people are supposed to be journalists, not television pimps. They are smart enough to know that what they are saying is bogus: with enough marketing, you can find an audience for anything. The job of the media is to educate us, but not everyone is smart enough to know that they need to be educated. Blaming the public is nothing but a cover for their shameful incompetence (with all-too-few exceptions in the case of PBS and Knight Ridder/McClatchy) in covering so much of what matters, in the elections and especially the run-up to the Iraq War. Your responsibility is to communicate what’s important. If you can do that in an interesting way, that’s great, but if you can’t, that doesn’t give you license to replace it with a story about Sarah Palin’s clothes. Should we stop teaching students about the Constitution because the signing of it wasn’t sexy or dramatic enough?

And, good luck finding anything close to substance on the 24-hour channels. They have long been content to let two opposing sides argue about what color the sky is and then tell the viewer that there is not enough time in the segment to settle the question. That we continue to have this debate about some nebulous responsibility on the part of the citizen makes me wonder if the old news media is even trying to endure. They certainly haven’t offered a good reason for why they should in years.

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