fling93 loves fishies

South Park Nails the News Media

Wow, that was one of the best South Park episodes ever, “Quest for Ratings,” where the kids run a news show and are getting clobbered by Craig’s “Close Ups of Animals with a Wide-Angle Lens.” Parker and Stone have totally nailed exactly what’s happened to our media. It’s why I don’t bother getting my news from television anymore, since, as I’ve previously mentioned:

I think television is a truly horrible way to get your news. For one, it is incredibly time-inefficient. Not only can you read much faster than you can listen, you can also pick and choose what topics to read about, whereas a news broadcast walks you through a bunch of topics chosen by somebody else. Also, the amount of time spent wading past advertisements seems higher for television than for newspapers or web browsing…

Not to mention that it is a lot harder to speak about a subject objectively than it is to write about it objectively for the simple reason that it’s much easier to remove emotion and bias from a piece of writing than it is from a human voice or face…. Plus, images tend to be much more emotionally loaded than words and can probably distort your memory of what actually happened.

And that South Park episode shows another obvious reason that I overlooked. Television news is way too sensitive to the number of eyeballs watching any given episode. If there’s a slow news day, they get clobbered. There’s tremendous pressure to just make stuff up or stretch the truth ridiculously, just like the kids ended up doing to try and compete.

Indeed, just as CBS did.

And regular viewers of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show have known this, as he skewers the news media’s coverage of politics every day of the week. For those who don’t watch it, I highly recommend it (but watch just the first half — don’t bother watching his guests because he’s a horrible interviewer).

And if you haven’t yet seen his appearance on Crossfire a few weeks ago, watch it now (link via the ever-effervescent Ealasaid)¹. He totally calls both Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson for being the pathetic partisan hacks that they are. And Carlson gets really angry and seriously embarrasses himself in hilarious fashion. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’ve just gotta watch it. You can also read the transcript here.

Indeed, network television in general is so sensitive to ratings that there’s a lot of cheap reality-show crap and inanity nowadays (not much unlike “Close-Ups of Animals with a Wide-Angle Lens”). As I also mentioned earlier:

…I don’t spend as nearly as much time watching television as I used to several years ago (not so coincidentally, I’m also a much more informed citizen now). The only ones I watch religiously are Six Feet Under, Sopranos, Carnivale, and — mostly because my wife hosts a weekly party around this (and not because of Mia Kirshner’s boobies) — The L Word. … Interestingly enough, they’re all on HBO or Showtime: networks that rely on subscriptions, not commercials, and thus aren’t so sensitive to the actual number of eyeballs watching at a particular time…. And maybe that’s going to be the way it is in the near future. You’ll have to pay for quality.

What exactly will happen, I’m not sure. I go on to speculate in that post that television will eventually change so that the masses will be able to supply content. You’re starting to see this with newspapers vs. blogs, and radio broadcasts vs. podcasting. It will eventually happen with television as well, but who knows how long that will take.

In the meantime, don’t get your news from television2. Get it from the web or from printed news. If you can afford it, specifically from publications that depend mostly upon subscriptions, like The Economist. And from blogs and bloggers who aren’t partisan hacks and can see through partisan hackery and actually tell it like it is, like Marginal Revolution, Dan Drezner, The Volokh Conspiracy, and, shrill liberal that he is, Brad DeLong, as well as many others.

And also yours truly, although I don’t have the time to really blog about news as it happens, but just supply commentary afterwards.

Speaking of which, let me just quickly mention that I do think the country is at a very delicate time. It looks like the Republican Party will probably look to consolidate one-party rule by marginalizing the Democrats, with signs like going after and winning Daschle’s seat (which my wife says is highly unusual) as well as changing the rules to let Tom DeLay keep his post even if he is indicted for corruption charges.

Very disturbing signs, and a lot hinges on how it all plays out. I think it’s all going to be up to the grown-up conservatives within the party. They will probably have to desert it at one point or another, and that Republicans like John McCain and Christine Todd Whitman fell into line behind Bush could be an ominous sign that this might not happen anytime soon.

But more on my thoughts on this later.

¹ In truth, I was the one who told her about it in the first place at a NaNoWriMo party, but she’s the one who blogged about it. And for those who didn’t get it, the “ever-effervescent” bit was my way of poking a little fun at Tyler Cowen and Jane Galt. Although Ealasaid actually is ever-effervescent in real life. Return.

² Although, if somebody knows of a TV news show that doesn’t suck, please let me know and I’ll pass on the word — no, The Daily Show is not a news show. Return.