While there is much talk about “angry mobs” stuffing local health-care town hall meeting providing much grist and chaff for morning and evening TV “news” show round-table discussions, such talk in total add little if anything to real solutions to the general problem of health-care in America.
With countless hours per week of TV time, TV news shows like Joe Scarborough’s, Morning Joe , or Bill O’Reilly’s, The O’Reilly Factor, these and other TV news media could become part of the solution by providing real insight into and reasoned explanations of HR3200. I am sure that Fox News and MSNBC as two examples have access to experts on HR3200 who could come to their programs as featured guests to review the actual proposed legislation and explain the legislation in clear language for all of us to understand. What a service Fox, NBC, ABC, and CBS—the former leader for news content—could provide! Think about it; just 10 minutes a day in review of a portion of the proposed health-care legislation could provide all of us with information that might be used to answer many of the questions Town Hall goers and others of us have about what might become THE major historical event of U.S. history outside of the Revolution and the Civil War. TV news, what is now more entertainment than real down to earth journalism could become part of the solution! Joe (Mika and Willie) and Bill could provide a kind of mini Edward R. Murrow, ‘White Paper’ Report on HR3200 and in so doing step up to meet their journalistic responsibilities.
With every great freedom there is also a great responsibility.
Could it be that the people who run the ‘news divisions’ of the major networks are more interested in ratings and profits than becoming part of the solution? Could the Joes’ and the Bills’ of journalistic theater be more interested in their personal well being rather than the hard work of digging for usable information and facts, and the root of the story? Or is there something more politically sinister going on here as suggested by some of the political fringe Black Helicopter groups? Only the final outcome will tell us!
D. M. Elmquist, Editor
Tags: Bill O'Reilly, healthcare, HR3200, Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe, The O'Reilly Factor
You definitely hit the nail on the head! Seems like the “journalists” are much more interested in maintaining ratings than in actually reporting news. Take the Keith Olbermann / Bill O’Reilly feud. See this L.A. Times article (published in the Entertainment section, mind you):
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-cable15-2009aug15,0,1144120.story
They spend more time attacking each other than they do reporting on the issues; basically reporting what the other one said, then ranting and raving about why the other is wrong. No journalism – just entertainment; very similar to all those “reality” shows. Hmmmm…
So what’s the answer? What should our response as intelligent citizens be? Just refuse to tune in? Email Olbermann and O’Reilly? I don’t know what good anything other than a severe drop in viewer ratings would accomplish.
While tuning out and turning off the TV is a legitimate response to the journalistic theater that now dominates cable and broadcast TV news programming another approach is indeed to email network managers and on-air personalities challenging them to include in their “news” hours real hard news segments and relevant investigative journalism. The lack of hard news and relevant investigative journalism is the direct result of the network news division becoming a department of the entertainment division and the sad fact that news program ratings are generally very low (what does that say about the American public?). So what we get then is journalistic theater and what journalism there is might better be called advocacy journalism; usually on the liberal side of any issue. D.M.E. Editor