Ted Koppel: The suits are ruining TV news

[quaoar]

This is from a speech that Koppel gave to the Overseas Press Club on how much TV news divisions have been compromised by corporate managers:

http://niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=0086

What is different about the television news business these days is that it’s driven by consultants, accountants and demographers. No longer do the television network news divisions show the American public what it ought to see; rather, they provide certain favored age groups with what the networks believe they want to see. It is purely a question of what sells.

That marks a critical change in our industry. The news divisions have gone from being loss leaders for their networks--a fig leaf for an otherwise hugely profitable enterprise--to becoming just another profit center within that enterprise. They haven’t entirely, but they’ve almost surrendered even the pretense of civic responsibility. Television news has devolved into essentially what the public would like it to be, and the public, we are told, does not much care for foreign news.

< snip >

If something happens in one of those places, I heard a former network news president say other day, we can always jet someone in. That is a profoundly telling statement. Instead of investing in someone on the scene who is familiar with the political and cultural landscape, who can give us all a sense of what’s going to happen, and who can provide us with a sense of context when it does, news is being re-defined as “that which has happened most recently…and which may pique the interest of a particular demographic group.”

More attention is being focused on the medium than the message: make it available on a cell phone; put it on a blog. Let’s see how many different messages we can jam onto a single screen at the same time.

Perhaps it was always a professional conceit: that gathering the news in dangerous places was actually worth risking life and limb. But we really believed that we were doing something worthwhile. I know that David Bloom and Bob Woodruff believed that. But frankly, looking at our industry these days, I’m not so sure that it is.

[dweller]

1. interesting ... i thought it was the 'toupees'

this from the guy that questioned DK why he was still running for Pres. at the debates during the primaries.

Ted, you were part of the problem, too late to point to downfall now that you've ducked out.

dp

[annabanana]

2. Surely he is smart enough

to have noticed this a long long time ago.

He and the remaining "news people" should have kicked up holy hell at the first sign of this kind of interference. They didn't and the genie is out of the bottle and running the show.

[quaoar]

3. The first part of the speech

gets into the history of conflict with the suits and how Edward R. Murrow left CBS, etc.

[Stinky The Clown]

4. Y'ever notice hjow these retired whores blame those still working

Hey Ted .... it was you too, buddy.

Now youy're gunna tell us with your sanctimony what we already knew .... and knew you to complicit.

Feh .....

[ReadTomPaine]

5. Thank you. He was there with the rest.

I don't see him spending his fortune and convincing his wealthy friends to fund alternatives or to start a movement to fix this. Sure, if you give him a check he's happy to talk about it, but put his money where his mouth is? Well, that's another matter entirely.

Hey Ted, you want to fix TV news? Start by hiring some of those news professionals out in the cold right now and giving them a place to do the sort of news you claim to want to see again. They could use the work and the support more than your hot air.

[depakid]

6. Deregulation

and the end of the public interest standard.

[Strawman]

7. That's not entirely true

Plenty of attention is paid to the message. That's what those suits and all their marketing research are there for. It's just that the attention is not guided by democratic considerations like fostering a strong civil society. It's specifically crafted and targeted to demographics that advertisers want. Tune in white males ages 29-34 (or substitute any other demographic group one can sell lots of shit to) and we'll mostly tell you exactly what our research says you want to hear and call it the news.

The same buttholes are ruining politics in the same way.