Scream-fests Over News

If someone who sees the indignant scream-fests that pass for prime time “news” wonders why they are so popular, the answer is simple: after a long day at work, many just want to sit back and be entertained. As Valson Thampu wrote:
“Party spokespersons can fight no-holds-barred in full public view, and not put us off, because we know – and they know that we know – they mean no harm and are only jousting with each other in jest.”

While that is undoubtedly true, Santosh Desai points out that there are genuine differences of views, which the prime time “news” channels know to use:
“Media speaks of and to its consuming constituency, framing events through the lens of what interests its audience. This has distorted any possibility of aggregating a sense of reality in a coherent and meaningful form. By setting up news as a conflict between a given number of worldviews, it works hard at placing its viewers in different camps.”
No wonder then, with each news outlet (plus Facebook) catering to its specific base, nobody ever gets the big picture nuanced view of multiple perspectives:
“The liberals overestimate the degree to which their ideas have automatic currency, the right overestimates the number of people who believe in the things that they do and the ‘nation’ that media invokes so often is nothing more than its narrow consuming base. What we are seeing today are many privately held realities, each catering to its own little constituency and believing in its own power, thanks to the access it enjoys to different forms of media.”

Seeing such a distorted picture also lets us, the viewer, feel superior and pour scorn on anyone who comes on TV, says Alex Balk:
“These people don’t know anything more than you do… Plus you at least have the good sense to shut your stupid mouth every now and again.”
That last point (making the viewer feel superior) will probably keep that format popular. And so the entertainment (or drivel) factor will probably drive out news and analysis for the foreseeable future.

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