Trash news
A few days ago, as the United States continued to reel from the violence of rioters, looters, thieves and just plain hoodlums who take advantage of peaceful protests, victimizing small and big shop owners, unmanned vehicles and plain innocent bystanders caught in a maelstrom of violence disguised as protests against racial injustice suffered in Minneapolis, some news anchors took it upon themselves to personally increase viewership in the ongoing network wars.
A case in point is that of a cable news reporter and TV anchor who, while interviewing a local politician who had just sang a few lines of “Amazing Grace,” had forced herself to tear up before coming on air. Describing her own on-screen emotions, she said that she was weeping not simply because of pent up grief but that her grief was quickly turning to anger and replaced by rage. The spectacle caught on camera was of a reporter shaking and obviously steaming inside, ready to burst as she asked not just for thoughtful responses but action.
It was cheap theatrics contrived to do one better than the conflagration of sadness, anger, rage and hate already indirectly ignited by the current situation outside the studios in many parts of America. And of course, the melodramatic tact was unabashedly designed for vulnerable audiences tuned in, to speak nothing of trying to win back a couple of ratings points that the cable network had been steadily losing for over a third of a decade now. It was quite a performance. A minute-long soap opera. And by no means was it calming or reassuring at a time when objectivity in news reporting had gone out the window, there and then replaced not simply by commentary that verged on promoting more anger but one, when broadcasted on national TV, multiplies and incites even more a country already at the brink. Her on-the-air thinly guised news reporting tact designed not simply to milk a delicate and volatile situation but to further foment its incendiary explosiveness if not downrightly instigate violent reactions was nothing new. Nor was the situation she found herself reporting on.
Five years ago in the middle of similar racial riots in Baltimore, Maryland, a neighboring state a few miles from Washington D.C., this same reporter proposed that war veterans turned policemen were responsible for the riots since “they’re ready to do battle” in communities. That set off a firestorm.
Not to be undone by similar trash news reporting, that same year as Baltimore burned, another primetime news anchor, also in an attempt to rile audiences and ignite racial animosity, while on the air held up a Confederate flag and a sign with “NIGGER” written all in caps. Both these media people report and anchor for the same cable news network whose continuously falling ratings compel such tasteless stunts.
Needless to say, and indeed, don’t we all know it, ratings and viewership impact on a network’s financials and the millions earned by talents, reporters and anchors. These are not distant mirrors. Too often the objective reporting of the news is trashed by both political partisanship and the influence of money. The same issues surround ABS-CBN.
The problem is attitude. Some reporters thrive on fire and brimstone. Bad news is good news. Never mind that the whole country is burning.
“Ratings and viewership impact on a network’s financials and the millions earned by talents, reporters and anchors.
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of course, the melodramatic tact was unabashedly designed for vulnerable audiences tuned in.