I've been watching the soi-disant news shows here, and getting more and more dissatisfied with them (as I suppose is obvious from other rants I've made). It occurred to me quite recently that one reason is the quality and type of guest that is always getting interviewed.
I should explain, first - there are 4 free to air channels here, which frankly are all pretty much rubbish: tons of "reality TV" with programmed reactions but nice cheap non-actors, a few game shows still survive, and some very formulaic and guarenteed non-offensive sitcoms and cop shows of various ilks. Then there is 'cable' (although I actually get this via satellite) which is divided into 'basic cable' and 'premium', based essentially on price - which in this case tends to actually relate to the quality of programs, as premium channels to tend to have the few really good and occasionally innovative programs.
The news shows are all on basic cable, or some variation thereof, and there are several channels of them, plus specialised business news and so forth. They all run 24 hours a day, which means they all have 24 hours of broadcast to fill with something, anything. The approach to this varies between channels, but it basically comprises some mix of massive repetition, pointless interviews, and endless editorialising by journalists, generally about subjects they exhibit a stunning ignorance of, or about their own idiot prejudices. Some of that can be amusing of course, especially if they either share my prejudices, or if I'm in the mood to be loudly and rudely mocking at the TV.
Anyway, one of the things I noticed is an awful lot of the people getting interviewed on these shows are other journalists. Now that might be fine in the case of, say, a financial analyst being interviewed about things economic, or a political analyst being interviewed about politics, or even say a political reporter being interviewed about what he's observed. However, an awful lot of it seems to be just reporters being interviewed for their completely uninformed opinions on, say, what the public thinks about X or Y, or what effect a government decree will have on Z, without any training or specialised knowledge at all: essentially just banging on about their own prejudices again, but palmed off as actual news.
Then in addition, you get the people who started as specialists on one subject, but obviously the news director liked them, so they start getting interviewed about broader and broader subjects, until it's completely removed from any knowledge or specialisation they might have. Which I suppose can be entertaining if they are someone who speaks vivaciously and has a fund of stories and metaphors to colour the interview, but in terms of disseminating actual information and real analysis and dissection, it just seems that anything useful gets inundated in a tidal wave of twaddle, misinformation (and of course outright lies and delusions).
This of course is not really different from what I do here, but then I don't ask for money or pretend to some greater significance. Hmm, perhaps I should consider a new career as a talking head? :)
The end result, however, seems to be an enormous echo chamber that outshouts any serious information, reinforces existing prejudice however crazy*, and lacks any real positive attributes at all. I don't have a solution for this**, but it looks like it will not get addressed - in fact it's very hard to see anyone who could address it - and will only continue its' ever-growing din.
*thus the nonsense about Obama being a foreign citizen, born of insane racism and amplified and repeated endlessly
** well none that is either politically or ethically acceptable. Shooting them all probably wouldn't work anyway
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