(Here’s Hoping That) The Emotional Center Cannot Hold

This is a gripping account of what goes wrong when the reporting of public news is made into a private corporate profit center. It’s long, and it’s worth the read, because it goes a long way towards explaining what is wrong with the institution of TV news in this country:

This was one in a series of lessons I learned about how television news had lost its most basic journalistic instincts in its search for the audience-driven sweet spot, the “emotional center” of the American people. . . . It reassured the audience by telling it what it already knew rather than challenging it to learn. This explains why TV news voices all use similar cadences, why all anchors seem to sound alike, why reporters in the field all use the identical tone of urgency no matter whether the story is about the devastating aftermath of an earthquake or someone’s lost kitty.

I read that and went “Wow! That’s exactly right, and no wonder I hate watching local news!” The programs all are consciously trying to manipulate emotion as a technique to hang onto viewers. For as long as I can remember, I have always been instinctively repelled by local news, without understanding why. Just last night, I got all bent out of shape at the local TV stations in southwest Michigan who were talking about the unspeakable terror of FOUR INCHES OF SNOW as thought it was götterdämmerung. For reference, Kalamazoo averages about 80 inches of snow each winter.

But this line from the end of Hockenberry’s piece struck me as surprisingly optimistic:

Technology, as it has done through the ages, is freeing communication, and this is good news for the news.

Perhaps better technology will make it easier to deliver relevant news to people who want it, but that does not automatically mean that NBC will be interested in taking advantage of the opportunity. Disruptive changes in communication tech are not necessarily good for the companies that control this country’s popular media outlets. And those companies are not going to just stand by and allow their profits to be damaged because a bunch of nerds happen to think the internet is cool, and that it might be nice if someone could use the power of TV to give the little people accurate, truthful information about the world they live in.

Remember, the TV industry’s customers are not viewers like you and me, but the advertisers who pay for time on their networks. The only thing that will force TV news to move away from the current drivel-based model is if the customers demand it because of sinking ratings… and as long as all the TV news stations do the same thing, none of them have anything to worry about. The fact that the Daily Show can survive by reporting not local interest crap, not cat-in-a-tree, not emotional-center voyeurism, but actual NEWS as comedy should be a giant waving red flag for the entire TV news industry.

So I think it’s a mistake to count on technology to save TV. People who want timely information are just going to have to find somewhere else to get it. GE’s approach to running NBC news, and the general phenomenon of ratings-driven news, is the very best argument for why net neutrality is essential to the future of American democracy.