No News is Good News.

A new age has arrived; a new age (not as in new-age hippie of course. God no, this age has washed behind its ears thank you very much), a new millennium (well kind of. We're not actually sure if it has begun or if it is starting next year, in six years time or five years ago), new technology (lap top computers, digital television, cyber pets, on-line shopping) a new order (Er, I meant to say New Labour). This new age needs new types of entertainment, new kinds of sports coverage and new types of news for all the new people all over the brave new world. New types of entertainment will include, watching ordinary people being treated in the most degrading manner by a smarmy T.V. game-show host who offers them the slim chance of winning one million pounds; watching ordinary people locked up in a house, sitting around doing nothing for weeks upon end; watching non-sensical Japanese cartoons about creatures that live in little balls. New kinds of sports coverage will be much like the old ones except people will have to pay for them. New kinds of news will be no news at all.
Among this years biggest television shows is "Who wants to be a millionaire?" Ask a silly question and your silly answer will be thousands of people clamouring to get on the show so that host Chris Tarrant (or Gay Byrne) can treat them like peasants begging outside of Good King Wenslas's window on St. Stephen's night. Another major success of the small screen this year was "Big Brother" Channel four's lowbrow bore-fest has not only helped in the sanitation of the surveillance society but it has (at least momentarily) turned voyeurism into a cultural institution. If watching people degrading themselves is not enough we also have "The Jerry Springer Show" where American T.V. proudly shows off one of it's cultural by-products: the ignorant conformity of Middle-America. On "Springer" middle-class Americans both black and white take the microphone to denounce others as freaks with a zeal not seen since Chairman Mao's infamous Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960's. The message is simple; get with the programme or be outcast. If you can't get enough of freaks being punished on T.V. why not watch "Cops" where brave policemen apprehend stupid criminals and solve domestic disputes. Maybe you're an animal lover? If so then you can watch "When good pets turn bad" where, yes you've guessed it, good pets turn bad. Of course for the kids there is "Pokemon", a cartoon based around a line of toys that teaches kids to pursue self-interest at all times no matter what the cost.
With all this new entertainment, what room is there for good old-fashioned news coverage? The answer is that there is very little room. If you take a look at the television schedules you will find that other than the main evening News, current affairs has been elbowed out of the prime time slots and into the realm of the night owl. On RTE for example, Oireachtas Report"(OR), the programme responsible for broadcasting the day's business from the Dail is afforded twenty-five minutes including advertisements, at around midnight. Now OR might not be thrilling viewing (hmm, watching people sit around in a house doing nothing eh? Sounds familiar) but surely a programme that allows us to keep tabs on our elected officials deserves to be broadcast at more social hours. Over on BBC2, at a glance we can see that from the hours of six to ten only half an hour is given to serious current affairs. For the remaining three and a half hours, viewers are treated to the cultural delights of "Roswell High", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" "The DIY Show"and "Top Gear". "Newsnight" One of the few programmes on British television that dares to question government policy at home and abroad (though it never questions the Neo-Liberal consensus) is aired at half past ten after all good schoolchildren and many working adults have gone to bed. The net result is that great swathes of the population walk around every day oblivious to the world of the arms trade and government corruption.
If we take a look at satellite television we find that what is on offer is just one piece of science fiction and fantasy after another (and that's just Sky News!). The move to specialist twenty-four hour News channels, contrary to what you might expect, pushes News off the agenda. People outside of the educated middle-class stick to the mainstream entertainment channels where "Springer" "Cops" and "Judge Judy" take the place of current affairs discussion and "Ibiza Uncovered" replaces investigative reporting.
Market values have also had an effect on the quality of the News. In order to compete with the bombardment of lowbrow entertainment News has gone down-market. An extreme example of this is the ill-fated L!ve T.V.'s Newsbunny. The Newsbunny would give the thumbs up or thumbs down to each News item depending on whether or not we were to view the item in a positive light. This removed the burden from the audience of making up its own mind. The Citizen is thus reduced from the role of active participant to passive observer.
Even the most tragic items of News need to have some sort of entertainment value. Karl Marx once wrote that when history repeats itself " The first time is tragedy, the second is farce." The recent News coverage of the murder of Damilola Taylor is a case and point. In ways Damilola's death mirrors the events surrounding the tragedy of Stephen Lawrence, however the media has taken what, tragic though it is, is not an uncommon event in Britain and turned it into T.V. drama. The constant broadcasting of CCTV footage of the boy shortly before his death is nothing short of voyeuristic and can in reality do little to help solve the crime. Similarly wars are presented as entertainment, all spin and special effects with little by the way of investigation or critical views. During the Kosovo conflict, Nato spokesperson Jamie Shea came out every day to sanitise murder and crack jokes with the assembled reporters. The well-documented coverage of the Gulf Wars was more along the lines of "look what these bombs can do" rather than "what are those bombs doing that to?"
While programmes like "Big Brother" and "Who wants to be a millionaire" are in one sense pushing out News and current affairs, they are also making the new News. During the main evening news, be it on RTE, BBC or ITV, you are likely to see some sort of "entertainment News" The million pound winner on Chris Tarrant's show was announced on the News before the programme went on the air while a David Beckham haircut or the closure of "The Rovers Return" pub in "Coronation Street" have headline making potential. Media moguls are quick to point out that this is what the public wants to see. If they are so sure about this then why not give the public a real choice. Why not give us hard-hitting documentaries about children who have been killed and maimed as a result of the arms trade and the torture schools run by the CIA for the benefit of the armies of Latin American dictatorships? Given the choice between a detailed documentary on how some elected officials and banks have been effectively defrauding the tax-payers and "When good pets turn bad" I think most people would choose the former.
(Thanks to Becky T, Saffron Blue* and 0--1- for the suggestions and debate)

click here to play sound