In the past, I have made it abundantly clear that I am no great admirer of the all-news and all-business cable TV channels. It is easy to point a finger at Fox with all of their right wing inanities, but the problem is much greater than the narrow world of Murdoch.

 

There is only so much news to report. They attempt to keep us tuned in with a broad array of shock and awe. As a younger man, I remain quite informed by reading the NY Times each day and tuning in to Cronkite, and later Dan Rather, in the evening. The Village Voice, Time, The Nation and other weeklies recited various perspectives and it was possible to identify the wide spectrum of political and social issues.

 

It was ESPN – the all-sports TV channel – that clarified the problem for me. Nightly, ESPN covers a live sporting event which varies depending on the season. From 7:30 p.m. to about 11:00 p.m. they keep sports fans happy with a game and endless recaps. What do you do the other 20 hours of the day to keep fans on tap and advertisers ready to spend their dollars? They sensationalize, scandalize, gossip and holler. ESPN reports feuds,  reruns any fight that took place, and gossips about the personal lives of athletes. Then they have their continuous ratings. Who was the best left-handed pitcher of all time and the top 100 will be announced, one day at a time into infinity. They debate each other…well, not really debate. They shout at each other about strategy, trades, who has or has not stepped up… They have endless, inane interviews with coaches and stars, all of which reveal nothing. They interrupt games to interview and commissioners general managers who offer more pablum.

 

And that is what Fox, WNBC, CNN and other news channels give us a half-hour of news and 23 ½ hours of scare, chatter and polarizing perspectives. Anne Coulter and Karl Rove can be seen on Fox. CNN has their own team of second guessers and political charts that are virtually impossible to comprehend. On election night, they introduced some technological nonsense that had a virtual reality component.   I thought someone was going to say “I see dead people!” And the all-weather is announcing that the next 7 days is “Tornado Week.” That should be comforting.

 

Many people are abandoning newspapers for the internet, claiming they are too busy to read the papers. I have never thought that being well-informed was such a low priority. The internet usually is utilized to get to stories people have heard about from others. But they miss out on editorials, op-ed articles, and letters to the editors. People are less informed today than they were 20 years ago. As the women in the New Yorker cartoon uttered “If this is the information age, why doesn’t anyone know anything?”

 

CNN has the best opportunity to keep us informed…but they are trying to keep up with Fox, which means dumbing down…filling in the blank spaces. I get more out of Bill Moyers Journal and 60 Minutes than a week of the news channels, and Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are smart enough to know that a half hour is just enough time to reveal the components of the human comedy.

 

I don’t know what will be the future of newspapers. This is not a great week to make a case for the daily press, what with the New York Post running a cartoon that is so odious that it has prompted protests and threats of boycotts. I can’t imagine what inspired them to run it…and as a first amendment defender who agrees that they have the right to run it…I can’t imagine anyone thinking up something so offensive, and the editors deciding that it is worthy of running. I don’t think that boycotting the paper would have much of an impact. What would work is going to their regular large advertisers, like the banks, Bloomingdales, Paragon and other institutions which had full page ads on Wednesday, the day the cartoon ran.

 

Of course the internet was filled with talk of the drawing giving it a life far larger than the Post exposure would have. Obviously, Mr. Murdoch’s Post is in the same position of the news channels – desperate to call attention to themselves with polarizing and cruel features.

 

But a responsible and effective press is a key to having an informed and responsible electorate. I don’t know where all this is going. No one could have imagined just a decade ago that the internet would have made the daily newspapers seem obsolete. But editions like this past Wednesday’s Post seem to be a good case for the winding down of the daily newspapers.

 

What’s to be?

 

 

I’m David Rothenberg…out on a limb.