"The News in this Country is a Business"
Via Drudge I found this article concerning the views of ex-CNN anchor Aaron Brown on the slow and steady decline of CNN News:
Former CNN anchor Aaron Brown has suggested that television viewers are responsible for the deterioration of broadcast news as much as the TV networks themselves."In the perfect democracy that I believe TV news is, it's not enough to say you want serious news, you have to watch it," he told an audience in Medford, OR this week.
As reported by the Medford Mail Tribune, Brown, speaking to a First Amendment forum, noted that while CNN was spending a fortune covering the 2004 tsunami, Fox News was channeling its resources into the missing teenager Natalee Holloway. The contest, he noted, was won hands down by Fox.
The result, he suggested, was not lost on his former employer, CNN. "The news in this country is a business," he said. "You might not like to think of it that way, but it is."
He suggested that television, instead of being diverted by scores of late-breaking trivial stories, ought to focus on the 6-10 "really important stories" that occur each day.
Commentary
Pro-business types like to argue that capitalism's invisible hands direct us toward the most efficient way of providng the appropriate incentives for suppliers to meet demand. For them it is an article of faith that this a good thing.
The anti-business types, often under the guise of "corporate social responsibility", lament is that there is something potentially immoral about this. Not every demand should be met, they say. At times the visible hands of those who know better should control and channel demand along the lines that the betters think best.
Mr. Brown's assertion that news is a "business" is telling. For starters, it comes off as, at best, abackhanded compliment, one that resonates with the "anti" camp. "Business" it would seem, is spoiling TV News' "perfect democracy." I always wonder about what motivates people who have been so well-served by a particular system to bite the invisible hand that served them.
More importantly, Brown's statements display an apparent lack of understanding of why so many American news consumers would rather watch news stories about Natalee Holloway than almost anything CNN and the other major networks have to say. Brown and his former employer seem not to know or care that CNN's reputation has been tarnished by its transparently leftward tilt and its all too frequent paroxysms of blame-America-and-Bush-first. Think about just how bad your network has to be if people would rather watch wall-to-wall Natalee coverage than your news coverage.
Switching to in-depth coverage of 6-10 news stories a day will do little to prevent CNN's steep ratings slide if it doesn't respect its customers enough to provide them with a decent product, i.e. stories which are balanced and objective and which respect viewers' intelligence.
Had Mr. Brown a little more knowledge and respect for "business", he and his former employer might have avoided such elementary mistakes like blaming the customer. They might have realized that implicit in CNN's tagline - The Most Trusted Name in News- is the idea that trust works both ways- to get it you have to give it.
But, alas, they don't get it.
See also, Dennis Dunleavy's firsthand account of Aaron Brown's well-received lecture in Ashland Oregon.
Tags: cnn | foxnews | Politics | News | fox | CNN | aaron brown |
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Comments
Here in the Philippines, I have my choice of CNN, BBC, or FOX NEWS. My first stop is FN. Why? Because I know that I won't have to watch the "USA bashing," that I fully expect to see on the other two. It's true what FN claims, they actually ARE fair and balanced.
I DO agree with Aaron B. that compared to CNN, FN is FILLED with fluff. I am sick to death of the Holloway and "Cruise Boat Mystery" coverage on Fox, but I refuse to watch much of the other channels due to their apparent pathological dislike of the United States. There are probably a "few" more viewers like me out there, as the ratings would seem to show.
Posted by: Phil | March 6, 2006 3:34 PM