News Media

I guess it was only a matter of time.  We’ve seen product placement advertising in movies for years.  You know, the prominently placed can of soda on a desk or the FedEx truck that inexplicably drives through a scene.  

Now, there is product placement on TV news.  The New York Times reports that the ethically questionable practice has begin on the newscasts at WVVU, a TV station in Las Vegas, with cups of McDonald’s iced coffee placed prominently in front of the news readers.  The ad agency behind the scheme said the coffee will be “whisked away” if KVVU happens to do a negative story about McDonald’s, like a report on some food illness.

The station says they are doing it to bolster sagging advertising revenue.  Sort of bottom-line wins over integrity, I suppose.

Here in the Washington, DC, area, we’ve heard radio news anchors on all-news WTOP seamlessly read a news story back-to-back with a commercial, using the same voice inflection, for years to the point where it’s difficult to differentiate the news story from the advertisement.  But TV news crosses the ethical line, I believe.

As Herbert Jack Rotfeld at Auburn University observed, “In the end, they just make the audiences even more skeptical of everything.”

I was watching CBS Face the Nation this morning and veteran newsman Bob Schieffer who kept using the phrase, “flip-flop,” to describe a politician who seems to change his mind.  Schieffer should know better than to repeatedly pick up on such simple-minded politicking jargon.  Heck, everyone changes his or her mind.

The origins of the current usage of the phrase came out of the 2004 presidential race when it was hung on John Kerry, and he fell for the ruse. The media picked it up and has run with it ever since, certainly in a “copy-cat” style.

My point is that today’s media gets caught up in these astonishingly stupid catch-phrases and jargon, which are designed to manipulate and distract them from real issues … and the media falls for it, again and again, as if they have a microphone but not a brain.  But, then, many in the media today are more focused on their own fame and fortune than ferreting out news, and that includes being cozy with power brokers at the detriment of objectivity.

I highly recommend reading today’s column by John Rich of The New York Times.  If the media and many of the rest of us cannot focus on real issues, then let’s elect Wall-E president.

Last week, almost 1,000 jobs were eliminated in the American newspaper industry, perhaps the bloodiest week yet for media job cuts in a year that saw many papers fighting for their lives. This week, the Baltimore Sun lopped off more than 100 newsroom jobs and shut the paper’s Business news section.

“You read about the great names — the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News — as if reading the obituary page,” wrote columnist Timothy Egan for The New York Times.

When a Washington Times reporter this morning referred to blue collar voters as “Lou Dobbs democrats,” I laughed out loud about how gullible we’ve become as a society … even the media.

The nightly rants on cable television by Lou Dobbs over the plight of so-called blue collar Americans are an act, a dramatic show, done for the sole purpose of revitalizing his CNN ratings, which were on a steep slide against MSNBC, and to enrich himself and his employer. If you really believe anything he says, then let me ask you this — why isn’t Dobbs outside the studio, shirt-sleeves rolled up and doing something tangible, other than talking? He has no record of community service or activism, just talk. The only time he leaves the studio is for a speaking engagement where he collects a fat fee.

What Dobbs is doing today isn’t really much different from what Rush Limbaugh has done to appeal to right-wingers for decades - extremist ranting to create publicity … saying outrageous things they want to hear but are afraid to say themselves. The purpose is to make money from inciting anger.

Limbaugh, too, is an act honed while a talk show host in Kansas City, and he has since made millions from hateful and often inaccurate and harmful extremist opinions.

It’s all just hot air.

I switched on the TV this morning only to see Phil Donahue on a cable news/talk show slamming America’s stance in Iraq. I thought, how odd to hear Donahue, who is no expert on the subject, making such statements. Then, I learned that he is promoting his involvement in a movie that criticizes the war.

Then, Bernard Goldberg, an expert on little, came on to yack about Democrats and Republicans, and why? To promote his new book.

On Sunday’s CBS “60 Minutes,” a former hard-hitting news show, there was Douglas Feith, a former Pentagon civilian executive who promoted the war in Iraq. Feith was saying that if they’d listened to him, everything would be rosy in Iraq. First, that’s outrageously untrue. But, why was he on “60 Minutes?” To promote his new book. “60 Minutes,” by the way, has turned into a weak former news program.

Last week, there was a panel discussion on Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour on PBS about the controversy over Barak Obama and his former pastor, and the loudest voice was a minister who … well, you guessed it. He promoted his new book in every other sentence he spoke.

Principles … ethics … integrity … true intelligence. Push ‘em aside and sell something.

CBS News, once known as the “Tiffany” news operation because of leadership and excellence in the industry, has been self-destructing over the last 20 years through a continuous series of colossal and highly public missteps. CBS News has fallen to sixth place in a three way television network news race for audience ratings simply because of self-inflicted wounds (the hiring of Katie Couric, the firing of Dan Rather, the loss of John Roberts, denudered “60 Minutes” and on and on).

Now comes a report in The New York Times by Tim Agango that CBS News may outsource some of its news-gathering to another ratings laggard, CNN.

Well, why not?! CBS News has closed nearly every one of its news bureaus, whittled professional and experienced news staff to the bone and already relies on news stringers with unknown credentials.

An event called, The Arab Broadcast Forum, is scheduled for early May in Abu Dhabi. It appears to be primarily for those few journalists who have the time luxury to attend such shows.

The agenda seems a bit too plain vanilla and avoids many more important issues that journalists should be focusing their attention on in the Middle East. I’ve added my comments in italics here after their list of agenda items:

- The Media War in Palestine: Are Journalists Safe? (The answer is, No)
- Another Year of Conflict: Covering Iran. (No one credibly covers Iran, and chances are that no one will.)
- The Art of Elections: US Elections and the Arab World. Produced by CNN International. (Yawn …)
- Reporting on Oil: Moving the Markets. Produced by Ebsar Holding. (Oil prices - controlled by a cartel — are up. End of story.)
- The Displaced Masses: Reporting on Refugees in the Arab World. Produced by VideoCairo Sat. (Talk with leaders of Arab countries.)
- Utilizing the Power of TV Drama. Produced by Abu Dhabi TV. (Watch any CNN newscast for cheap drama.)
- Reliable Media Resource? Content from NGOs. Produced by Reuters TV (You’re kidding?!)
- The Arab League Media Charter. Produced by LBC. (The acronym, not explained, either means Louisiana Baptist Churches or Lebanese Broadcasting Company.)

The more important, timely and certainly more meaningful issues that will test the moral fiber of journalists and news organizations in the Middle East are obviously missing from the conference agenda: Terrorism. Coverage of Human Rights, Women’s Rights and Religious Freedom. By avoiding those issues, I can only assume the conference is just another PR stunt.