This is a piece that I wrote in June of 2003. While I admit that the media (including CNN) has grown a little more backbone since I wrote it, I hold that they did so only because the Bush administration committed grievous blunders and bad assessments that nobody could validly ignore. I do not believe, however, that the fundamental danger that I outline here is anywhere near gone. The danger of ratings allowing emotionally overwrought people to select their own news content is still I serious danger to not only the United States, but also the rest of the world. In fact, I believe that what we are now seeing in Iraq is partly a result of the ratings loop creating support for Bush's policies that were higher than they should have been and making our government resemble, for a time, a single-party state. Additionally, I should point out that my estimation of the journalistic integrity existing at FOX News was highly optimistic. By using his team of Harvard researchers to do some top-notch research, Al Franken has shown in what lack of factual depth FOX news anchors are content to wallow.
The Ratings Race: To the Top or Bottom?
Sitting in a workshop on writing promotions and teases, I look up to see that the lecturer has flashed up his newest example of an excellent tease. On the screen is Bill Hemmer, a prominent anchor from CNN Domestic standing in the Kuwaiti desert, tank artillery shell in hand, next to some U.S. servicemen. “When we come back, they’re going to show you one of these getting shot off.” The audience erupts into delighted laughter and applause. I glance around to see if everybody approves. A young writer/producer from CNN International is raising her hand. “Does anybody think that that was a little sensationalistic?” The lecturer responds,“Well, don’t you think that it would be cool to be able to see one of those tank shells shot off?”
The vast majority of the people in the room that day were promotions writers. Their job is to energize the audience, make them think that something interesting and exciting (maybe even fun) is coming up. The writer/producer from CNN International, on the other hand, has as a large part of her job description to report the news as objectively and correctly as possible. This is not to put blame for bad journalism on promotions writers. That tease not only aired, but the producer of that particular show let it air. The problem with the tease was not that it failed to galvanize its viewers. It no doubt did. The horrific reality is that war, the most sober of human institutions, was allowed to be turned on its head and presented as a Hollywood visual spectacle. The writer/producer saw, as perhaps none of her colleagues did, that to conflate this most serious of issues with entertainment was to tacitly justify the U.S. position. This justification would not be based on fact, but instead on a visceral, emotional response. I do not intend to condemn the United States on its position with regards to Iraq. What I intend to condemn is the part that the American media played in creating the incendiary fervor in support of that position that existed among much of the American citizenry.
The premise of the argument is that in the presence of ratings, there exists a feedback loop between producers of broadcast media and their audience. Of course it must be that news producers recognize that the audience is influencing their programming in the form of ratings. But there is a question that is too seldom asked: On what basis are these viewers making their channel selection? If, as is often assumed, the viewer is choosing their channel based on factual integrity and completeness and objectivity of reporting, then there is little to fear from our media. If, however, people do not truly desire an academic and factual experience, if they desire instead an emotional experience or worse, one designed to justify their emotional responses, then the world has much to fear from the media of the world’s first hyperpower. If we are to answer the question of how people are choosing their preferred news station, we have only to look at the rise of part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, Fox News.
Fox News has become the omnipresent voice of conservative media in America. It now consistently beats CNN in the ratings war, billing itself as a fair and balanced, cut to the chase, objective news source. We have only to glance at their list of embedded war correspondents to see how the reality matches up to these claims. The day that Oliver North qualifies as an objective journalist will be the day that Webster closes down the dictionary shop. And master cartographer though he may be, Geraldo has never topped the list of entries in my mind’s Who’s Who of International News Experts. This is not to insinuate that Fox purposely reports incorrect information to its constituents. Most likely they do not. What Fox does is to present facts in a sensational and slanted format to a populace who wants just that. Not only do they want this sensationalism, they also want (need?) to be continually told that this drastically one-sided programming is objective (à la “fair and balanced”).
What is such a positive feedback loop of emotion-driven ratings and visceral programming capable of producing? The answer depends on what sort of mindset the American citizen holds. I hold that in times of crisis, nationalism is the main factor in determining the American mindset. And we must forthwith abandon the long-held self-delusion that patriotism is anything other than the dreaded nationalism, the same ism that drove a pre-World War I Europe into political party monopolies and rapid militarization. If United States foreign policy has been deemed outright imperialistic by many current and former allies, then the domestic political situation fits the mold perfectly. Rhetoric from President Bush and his cabinet sets issues not in the realm of political discussion, but along lines of “good” and “evil.” These are not terms to encourage discussion, but terms to close divisions and unite. Bush’s Patriot Bill sailed through a Congress that it would have had up in arms 30 or even 4 years ago. Prior to the Iraqi conflict, the United States handily dispensed with allies to whom we had been careful to pay lip service as recently as the humanitarian efforts in Kosovo. The U.S. Congress saw none of the heated batter that Tony Blair faced in the British Parliament. Instead, the United States saw Democrats and Republicans doing their best to look identical in their fervent attempt to capitalize on the fear and indignation of a post 9/11 American populace.
The game has not been played to its end. While Fox is perhaps the most vociferous of the hyper-emotional news broadcasts, it is not alone. In its bid to compete with FOX, CNN has changed a sufficient amount for CNN International to begin to break ranks. CNN International is not at the mercy of ratings as it is impossible to calculate worldwide viewer level. It shows. I have seen first-hand the refusals of CNN International producers to run the flag-waving packages of many correspondents that are regularly run on CNN Domestic. There is constant effort at CNN International not to carry Domestic’s coverage so as to avoid overly patriotic or pro-U.S. fonts. Anchors and writers at CNN International have been cautioned to avoid the terms “smart bomb” and “collateral damage” in their broadcasts preferring to say “civilian casualties” in recognition of the fact that even if a bomb has a GPS guidance system capable of precise targeting, this says nothing in regards to the blast radius after it hits. As I heard a top CNN International executive say, “We won’t have any American jingoisms on our programming.” But CNN Domestic continues to spout such jingoisms. They have not recognized that conflation of facts (even ones verified by two sources) with rhetoric, noise, and visual spectacle can influence viewers not just in their choice of programming, but in their political views as well. And the ratings show it: viewers want to be influenced.
There is a common wisdom about positive feedback loops. They cannot last. Situations cannot indefinitely change in the same direction. American broadcast media feeds into what the public wants. Our public in turn seems ready to endorse any action purported to involve U.S. security interests, no questions asked. The wisdom of current U.S. foreign policy is not my concern. My concern is that there was no broad discussion in deciding what that policy would be. If American broadcast media further embraces propaganda, it will not matter in the end whether that propaganda was created by a totalitarian state or whether we created it ourselves. I am scared of where we will be by the time the loop collapses.
