Back in the early days of television there were people who thought the medium could become a fount of serious news and education. How wrong they were. Despite some early experiments, and work done by pioneers like Edward R. Murrow, "TV news" over the years steadily became more and more of a self-contradiction. The daily news on PBS may be an exception, and occasionally there are network news special reports - more like documentaries, actually - devoted to a specific topic, which can demonstrate the potential power of TV.
But by and large, news on network television takes a back seat to entertainment or, to be more accurate, news is like a hostage of entertainment, allowed to speak only when the tape is ripped off its mouth, and then often to make a statement prepared by its captor "entertainment." That's why we see reports purporting to find deep newsworthiness in some new detergent-drama being aired on Channel X later this evening, and similar perversions.
The latest example, of course, is the coverage provided the recent death of Michael Jackson. Friday, more than 24 hours after Jackson's death, after a full day of incessant repetition of the same facts, one national network still devoted its entire evening news to Jackson (with a 30-second exception about the entertaining affair of South Carolina's Governor). There was news of his death (yes, we knew that), interviews with people who knew him "back when," a retrospective of his impact on pop music, a report that everybody was sold out of Michael Jackson CDs within a few hours...in short, the long-suffering hostage (news) was trotted out to read, not a ransom note but a fanzine.
Does this make sense? The "news" part was that Michael Jackson died. Fifteen seconds, end of story. Or a full minute, maybe, to add one or two video clips -- that was the treatment that the equally though less weirdly deceased Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett got. It's not that nothing was happening anywhere else in the world - Afghanistan, Iraq, Capitol Hill, or even Pierre, South Dakota. No, it's evident that network execs and possibly anchors just realized the so-called King of Pop would attract more eyeballs for commercials than anything else, so information was hog-tied and hidden behind a curtain.
I completely understand that Jackson's fans, who allegedly are numerous, would eat up all the coverage that could be thrown at them. And plenty WAS thrown at them, not just in constant reports and retrospectives on television, but in all other media too. Other "news" media (online services, print media) can offer blanket attention to one event while still providing real news in addition; but television's 30-minute doses of news are never going to be more than 30 minutes (and often are less) so if Michael Jackson gets all the time, nothing is left. On any given day, if entertainment and celebrity are afoot, TV can't be relied on to tell an informed citizen what he/she needs to know. That's the fatal flaw of television as an information medium; should the networks even bother?
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