Saturday. Sofa. Coffee.
The content of "the news" is no longer a good-faith account of a recent event of some import to the public. The description of events, and what old-school journalists called "facts," have taken a subordinate role.
These days "the news" is not actual events or facts. "The news" is what people think about actual events or facts. It is Gallup, Quinipeac, Rasmussen, Pew and the rest. No requirement that the people polled know anything about the topic in question. All they need is an opinion to become the news.
This is a handy, and intentional I think, turn of events for the news media. Reading poll results is a whole lot cheaper than funding a legitimate news gathering organization. And there can be no claim of bias news reporting if you don't. Report the news, that is.
A few weeks ago the networks dedicated huge amounts of air time to polling regarding health insurance reform legislation. One of the pundits, after reviewing the polling numbers, made what he apparently thought was a significant point.
President Obama failed to tell the people what was in the legislation. They simply did not understand it. The pundit then introduced polling data to back up his assertion. In the hour that I watched the "news" program, over one-half of the non-commercial time was dedicated to poll results about President Obama, Congress, Democrats and Republicans, and the health insurance reform legislation. We heard how men, women, southerners. northerners, African Americans, whites, Hispanics, over 30, under 30, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, heathen unbelievers, Civitans and Lion's Club, Auburn and Alabama fans feel about that important issue.
What we didn't hear about was that important issue.
Not one second was dedicated to explaining or describing the legislation in question. Apparently that is not the job of the news media. After all, the cable news channels only have 24 hours each day to fill. Surely they can be forgiven for not getting around to every little thing . . . like the legislation that is the crux of the whole discussion.
Like the news.
Despite what most news outlets would have you believe, the important issues before us are understandable. It just takes a little time, and work. A few months ago the news outlets reported over and over, and interviewed legislator after legislator, about the length of a proposed health insurance reform bill. Why, it was over one thousand pages. Far too long to report on, or to read.
But it was triple spaced and contained quite a bit of boiler plate. I would hope that every reporter, news anchor and pundit who reported the length of the proposed bill in such authoritative tones was capable of sitting down and digesting the entire proposal in less than eight hours. I hope they did. But I'm pretty sure most of them didn't.
You know those photo opps that every President takes advantage of from time to time, sitting in front of a bunch of elementary school kids, reading from a big picture book?
I can see it now. President Obama sitting in one of those little chairs with a large book open in his lap, surrounded by the fresh-scrubbed faces of reporters, news anchors and pundits. There are no pictures, but some of the graphs have pretty colors.
"What's this I see, in front of me,
This big thick book, at which I look . . ."
Shhhhh. Aren't they cute.
They've gone to sleep.
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