Found on Erik's link blog, CNBC and MSNBC both incorrectly reported Stewart verdict.
The culmination of a trial for a woman who built her homemaking empire in large part on television drew intense interest from TV networks. ABC, CBS and NBC broke into regular programming to report the verdicts.
With cameras not allowed in the courtroom, networks had to devise intricate plans to get the news out — involving scarves, placards, cell phones and quick feet.
Let's be realistic for a moment. What is the difference in elapsed time between:
- A reporter holding up a placard with the bare minimum summary of the verdict on it, and
- The reporter making notes about the verdict, carrying it to where the broadcast is happening, teaming with the producer to write up a clear summary and having the talking-head read it on air.
The latter holds the advantage in every single area but one: it is more informative, more accurate... and takes maybe ten or fifteen minutes longer.
The former isn't journalism, it's newstainment.
By any objective measure, the Martha Stewart verdict shouldn't have been something the world needed immediate, within-the-minute notification of. Stewart was a public figure found guilty of giving false evidence. Most of the interest in the case came from the contrast between the conviction and her clean homemaker image. What difference would fifteen minutes make to a public interested in finding her fate after a protracted trial? What difference would waiting for the evening bulletin make?
None, whatsoever. But you can make it matter to people if you feed the drama the right way. You can convince people that this is something that should matter to them, that they should be on the edge of their seats, demanding to know the outcome as soon as the judge hands down the verdict. If not sooner.
One of the best ways to entertain is to manufacture excitement, and one of the best ways to manufacture excitement is to manufacture a sense of urgency, whether there is one or not. Stress how we're waiting for the verdict. Create an artificial deadline. Create an atmosphere where you are rushing to bring the news as quickly as possible, and that urgency will be infectious for the audience.
Hey, the same tricks work on 24, and we know that none of the people in the show really exist. That guy isn't really the president, nobody's really trying to kill him, and Keifer Sutherland's not really saving the world. If we can get hooked by fiction, the same tricks can get us hooked on semi-fact.
And by making us excited and getting us hooked, eyeballs are delivered to advertisers. Newstainment.
It was the same thing during the most recent Iraq war. We were told over and over how important it was that we were getting constant, 24-hour news coverage. How important it was that we were getting information from people on the ground within seconds of it happening. How lucky we were that reporters were embedded with army units so we could have these first-hand accounts.
Journalism suffered, of course. The news we got was almost universally poorly fact-checked, poorly analysed and in the case of the embedded journalists, completely sacrificing any last vestiges of journalistic impartiality. But journalism isn't important any more. It's no longer good enough to live from the profits that good reporting can bring in: you have to maximise shareholder value.
Hear, hear. You could argue that at least with something like, say, Iraq, the coverage was at least on a topic that had national and international import. But even then, only the combatants need up-to-the-second information, and let's hope they got better information than we did. As to why the trial of a famous person should demand this type of coverage, well ... it doesn't. Even daily papers have a hard time getting things right on their daily deadlines (as opposed to instant deadlines), and we assume most of them try very hard to be accurate.
Sunday, March 7, 2004, 1200 hrs. pst.
Dear Charlie,
Did they get it wrong? Who cares. Martha is wonderful morality play stuff. Having lived near her on Long Island, I can tell you that the stories of her bitchiness are legendary. She and her even more obnoxious neighbor were having a property line dispute. He hired some workmen to build a fence enclosing the disputed piece of property within his domain; Martha came driving home one night to discover the work in progress and manifested her objection by pinning one of the workmen to the uncompleted fence with her Mercedes. The Chief of Police wanted her tried for assault and battery but the Suffolk County Sheriff, his jurisdictional superior and a much more politically involved fellow, took the case away from the town and let her off. It's simply a shame that her punishment cannot invove her running naked through a gauntlet of fellow citizens who are allowed to whip her with some pliable and harmless wand that would, nevertheless, leave bright dye streaks across her body. We could toll a large bell while she ran and have bleachers of cowled figues chanting "Doom, doom, doom". It's too bad that she can't be given the option: prison or thel naked gauntlet.
Iraq's a different story. I still don't know what happened or is happening there and the national press sure isn't going to tell me. It's either toe the line or go home. Plus, being so involved with Israel, the Iraqi story never dwells on the continued existence of Israel as genesis for continued fighting. Nor, interestingly, has there been much speculation about the future of the Ramallah oil field, the easiest-to-recover large deposit of oil in the world. Were I a Moslem, my principle view of the phenomena would be "Moslem nobodies screwed again".
Au revoir,
Chummie
Don't know if Jon Stewart's Daily Show is broadcast outside the US, but his humorous look at current events and the state of broadcast journalism is a bit more palatable than most of the, er, "real" televised news over here.
As for standards of taste and journalistic integrity, we Americans and Brits have Australia to thank for the gift of Rupert Murdoch...to think that he had to venture abroad to find a public that truly appreciated his vision:)