Prescott wrote:
you shouldn't sacrifice the public trust for profits and ratings.
Don't the ratings indicate that Fox News hasn't violated the public's trust?
Not necessarily...PBS and CSpan have basement ratings but they're giving you the bare bones facts. You can go right to the source and watch and see what your representative is doing on Cspan but no one watches that.
You can go to MSNBC or Fox and hear what you want to hear in primetime (I realize, news "commentary", but we can hear what we want to hear...for the most part). Nobody on a station that calls itself a "news" station...should on the one side say things like "Obama is post racial, I forgot he was black....blah blah" or on the other side "Obama and his socialist/marxist/real american hating/secret muslim manchurian candidate/born in africa takeover of America blah blah" Unless the people saying these things are the guests on the show and will be rebutted by a neutral host who will refuse to allow fallacious arguments to go through unchallenged to the public like a Judge will disallow improper testimony or evidence from getting to a jury.
Ratings, in America, although like everything else this isn't always true, often indicates what is most popular but not necessarily what is of high value.
Mcdonalds has sold a billion hamburgers, Nickelback has sold millions of albums, the Jersey Shore was one of the most popular shows on cable, Twilight was a box office smash, More people vote for American Idol than for President, Coca Cola is one of the best selling products in the world, USWeekly outsells magazines like National Review or the New Yorker easily,
Maybe "violate the public trust" was poor word choice but c'mon...Putting Chris Matthews on T.V. who will practically fellate the President doesn't help someone with a progressive ideology reevaluate their position from a neutral point of view. Some of these guys are better than others but the general point is there. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while so the fact that we might gleen some value here and there isn't enough for me.
And for instance, and I concede, I'm picking on Fox News here...but they gave so much more coverage to the Scott Brown victory than the Haiti Earthquake...perhaps it's fair to say that CNN didn't give enough coverage of the Scott Brown victory...but I think when choosing what to show, the editors ought to ask...
"What does the public need to see, what's crucial, what do people need to know about";
as opposed to
"What is going to get me the most viewers so that I can generate more ad revenue and improve the stock price for the shareholders"
Glenn Beck being a demagogue is going to beat boring ass Anderson Cooper standing in a depressing poor country every time.
And although the people need to hear about the scott brown victory as it might show a reflection of public opinion and a repudiation of what is happening in domestic legislation, but do they really need to hear about it more than what is one of the worst catastrophes in our Hemisphere? I'm just not sure...
MSNBC probably would have done the same thing if it was a democrat winning Kay Bailey Hutchinson's seat and the point would remain the same.
And then, CNN and who's covering the Haiti tragedy have to add these human interest elements to make it more entertaining, etc. and that IMO is just as problematic.
I just want to watch, boring, hard hitting, critical and skeptical news and you can't find it because news editors are managing their programs in the interest of their shareholders wallet...the best place is PBS and that is contrary to the way it should be because it is the government's subsidized news which by definition you shouldn't be able to trust as the government watchdog and plus...a rigid list-like reader of the Constitution might even suggest that this government funding for PBS isn't even constitutional.
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