I post my monthly Albuquerque Tribune column here after it's published. This was in yesterday's Tribune:
USEFUL TV NEWS?
Maybe back in the ignorant, clueless ‘60s when the tube wasn’t committed to maximum profit
By Arthur Alpert
I fear looking back. Might get stuck there. But an email – subject Dong Xoai – just knocked me smack into 1965. Dong Xoai, you see, is a hamlet northeast of Saigon where we shot a TV documentary once.
A guy in Texas wondered - did I know his Special Forces dad there? (No, but I’ll send him the film when I dig it out.)
Wow! Suddenly I’m observing a younger, very ignorant me. So clueless that he produced a Rorschach film – hawks found it pro- war, doves, anti.
No, it wasn’t great journalism, but I learned lots. First, respect for the GIs, confused and scared but soldiering on. Second – suspicion that they were sacrifices. As White House and Pentagon briefers described a simple war we were winning, these combat engineers and Special Forces waded through rice paddy Hell. (Plus ça change, eh?)
Lastly – told you I was young - I concluded TV news could be useful.
On retreating from his anchor chair, Dan Rather said something similar about making a difference, reminding me that the notion TV journalists might aid and abet American democracy wasn’t always laughable. The TV business wasn’t always committed to maximum profit.
Warning: I must commit history here to back that up:
1920s- 1930s: The first Radio Act sets up regulation "in the public interest, convenience and necessity."
Why? Chaos rules radio, a new technology that cannot make a buck. Businessmen demand regulation! Finally, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover accedes, telling them where on the dial they may broadcast and how powerfully. Dollars flow.
1940s-50s: Visionary, brawling pioneers like Bill Paley and David Sarnoff hire Murrow, Severeid, Brinkley, Cronkite (from print journalism, mostly) to do serious news on radio and, after WWII, television. Local stations follow in the early 60s.
Plus, the FCC creates educational TV "in the public interest."
1981 to today: Deregulation and its fruits - seven Colossi own the industry. Radio news - gone. Poisonous talk - swelling. TV news - empty calories.
For lack of a book on that decline-and-fall, here a few milestones in the evolution of the business, technology and politics:
Item: Networks discover "opportunity costs." Murrow’s "See It Now" makes money, but a sitcom at that hour could rake in bigger bucks.
Goodbye, Ed.
Item: Local stations employing show biz tools (attractive anchors, flashy video and graphics) win ratings.
Item: New technology (videotape, microwave, satellite) brings stories faster. Does zero, zilch, nada to improve content.
Item: Companies go public, responsible now to Wall Street. Bigger fish swallow them. And lo, broadcasters exit. Enter mega-corporations pushing "product."
TV news is now a "profit center." The "public interest?" Words.
The blessed First Amendment just celebrated during Sunshine Week restrains government, not the corporations processing whatever it is we flounder in daily. Media muck? Info-sausage? . Maybe Newszak. As Muzak’s elevator music is to real music, so is Newszak to real news.
1965 was eons ago. The idealist in TV news today - sorry, John Donne – that man is an island.
Surely news must make money, but if that’s all it does, it’s a commodity. Still, before you stone a broadcaster remember we buy the product. The Tube is our drug of choice.
Sad story but it’s not over. Remember the little flower in Picasso’s Guernica; there’s hope for journalism, too. Let’s ponder print and cyberspace in future columns.
For recommended reading on broadcast history, email Alpert, a semi-retired newsman from Albuquerque, at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column appears in Insight & Opinion the fourth Thursday of the month.