Toronto Star media columnist Antonia Zerbisias on the disappearance of foreign news from the U.S. networks and her take on commuter dailies.
First, foreign news:
"Sept. 11, 2001 was my moment of truth," says veteran CBS foreign correspondent Tom Fenton, now retired, on the line from London.
In his new book Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, The Business of News and the Danger to Us All (Regan Books, 262 pages, $36.95), Fenton lists the trivial and the titillating that passed for news in 2001.
"(O)n the eve of 9/11," he writes, "here is what the CBS Evening News offered: a report on the sexual exploitation of young people; a story with eye-catching video on dangerous aerial stunts by military pilots; another story with in-your-face video, this one featuring a Sacramento serial killer; a piece on declining consumer spending; and two health stories — one of them about dietary supplements."
Sept. 11 was expected to change that. But, even with pressing problems like Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Syria, says Fenton, "none of the networks is talking about providing more international news, more context, or serving the public better in its time of need." ...
"The major news organizations have forgotten their responsibility to the public and have replaced it almost completely with responsibility to stockholders," says Fenton. ...
... Ratings, not relevance, are what too often drive a network news lineup. In 1996, when Fenton pitched an interview with the then-little-known bin Laden, already threatening Americans, "the bosses saw him as an obscure Arab of no interest to our viewers."
It goes deeper than just the networks.
I attended a 2003 speech by AP reporter Kathy Gannon, who is the Pakistan/Afghanistan bureau chief, and she remembered being told in the summer of 2001 by a group of U.S. news editors: "Why should we care about what's going on there?"
She said she felt like telling them, "'You'll find out.'" :)
Frankly, there's little evidence that vast swathes of the U.S. populace are curious about the rest of the world.
The influence of the Big Three newscasts, while still significant, are in decline. I wonder if the book talks more about the role of the cable networks.
Metro has apparently found the trick to targeting younger readers who have not grown into the mainstream newspaper habit, like their parents and grandparents did before them. As the research shows, 77 per cent of Metro's readers don't read other papers — and half of them are under the age of 34.
The formula is simple: Distil the day's events into easily digested bits and bites.
It's news for, if not exactly the attention-challenged, then for those who have neither the time nor the appetite for anything more than can be comfortably and quickly read on a bus, or between classes, or in line for a double-double.
What's more, the price is right — especially with youth who believe not so much in freedom of information as they do in that information should be free. ...
... If original quality journalism is what sells mainstream news to a paying public, then how do we sustain original quality journalism if we're giving the product away?
There's a serious question to be asked about whether the public values what we in the craft like to think of as "original quality journalism."
The other thing is there isn't that much "original quality journalism" (OQJ for short) being produced.
How much of the Toronto Star, to name one example, is thinly veiled (Condos! Cars! Real Estate! Woo hoo!) advertorial?
The Star does some great investigative reporting, but curiously, it always seems to be published on a Saturday, the biggest paper of the week.
Studies of Canadian newspapers by Ryerson University j-prof John Miller have shown most news is institutional and stenographic in nature. In fact, the best papers still have upwards of 80 per cent of low-level coverage, which has the advanatage of being cheap to produce.
I might write more later, but it's sleepy time.