Return to Nicholas Johnson Home Page
Respect for the boob tube? I have great respect for Gazette guest columnist Timothy Walch and ombudsman Kenneth Starck. But both hit themes last Sunday with which I disagree.
Walch's was headlined, "Respect, please, for 'boob tube' on its anniversary." Starck's posed, "'Civic' journalism raises question: What is media's role?"
In fairness, Walch's "respect" for television comes from its past (Edward R. Murrow) and future ("Internet television") -- not it's present. Broadcasting's finest hour has always been the future. Consider the predictions for AM radio, FM, VHF television, UHF, cable -- and now the Internet. Each promised to uplift our spirit, expand our mind, and empower our democracy. Each lied.
Starck takes aim at what he calls "civic" or "public" journalism. A vague concept at best, Starck quotes a definition: "publicly engaged, solution-oriented journalism."
To be equally fair to Starck, his principal objection to "civic journalism" is that the Gazette and KCRG-TV are already providing it.
So I would let the matter drop if I had not done something I have not done for 20 years: I read the comics. Two unfamiliar strips offered my rebuttal.
"Non Sequitur" detailed an interview between an editor for a major publisher and an aspiring writer. The writer is asked, "So, you have no relationship at all with O.J. Simpson? Hmm, How about with Timothy McVeigh or the militia fringe groups? . . ." He responds negatively to each question. The final frame shows the writer thrown out the front door of "Nineties Literature Publishing House."
"Mallard Fillmore" shows a duck watching TV. It says, "In a lot of countries, the government keeps serious, important, policy-oriented news away from the people. But this is America! Where the networks do it instead." The TV blares: "Late-breaking JonBenet Ramsey information. Timothy McVeigh's third-grade teacher talks! But first, is your dog psychic?"
Comic strips have no pipeline to "truth." They're no substitute for academic research. But they have to rely on widely held experience and belief. And both make my point.
Global media moguls, with more focus on the bottom line than the by-line, are willing to so trivialize "journalism" as to make it unrecognizable. They offer us what a great journalist, Walter Lippmann, once called "side shows and three- legged calves." What Paddy Cheyefsky predicted in the movie "Network." It's here.
In an age when "what you don't know can kill you," trivialization and sensationalism take time and space that drive out news -- and the information we need to survive and prosper.
For contrast, listen to the BBC some evening, from WSUI-AM (910) or on shortwave. You will hear about the Timothy McVeigh trial, or the Chicago Bulls victory.
But you will also hear what's going on inside countries vital to our economic prosperity and military security. Countries most Americans have never heard of. Countries that only make TV's evening news if there is a change in government, visit by our President, or American killed in a natural or man-made disaster. The BBC reports scientific discoveries that affect your health and your children's future. Social and economic trends. In short, "the news."
Recently my travels have taken me, among other places, to Australia, Chile, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand. Each offers newspapers with about as much U.S. news as those here. But they also provide news, not only of the local country, but from the rest of the world.
Examples of genuinely useful stories from last Sunday's Gazette would include those dealing with family values, nursing homes, North Korean conditions, the impact of the Hong Kong change-over on Iowa business, the review of "The Second Curve," and the report of Internet sites listing thousands of jobs. But there are hundreds of U.S. papers in which none of these stories would have appeared.
When you consider the time local TV stations spend on commercials, weather, sports, fires, murders, trials, and accidents there's not much left for "news."
We don't have to trash the media -- except when it offers only trash. But "respect for the boob tube"? Not until it's been earned.
_______________
Nicholas Johnson, former F.C.C. Commissioner and author of "How to Talk Back to Your Television Set," teaches communications law at the University of Iowa College of Law.
Return to Nicholas Johnson Home Page