One Small Voice: Confessions of a snobby news junkie

“I make my living off the evening news

It has happened.

I have become an insufferable news snob.

Let me set the scene. It’s morning. I’m seated at my laptop, and I’m perusing my e-mail, which is loaded each morning with articles from the sources to which I subscribe: NPR, The Hill, CNN, The New Yorker. Since finding the Media Bias Chart 3.0 a couple of weeks ago, I am now putting the most credence in NPR and The New Yorker for facts. When I want my bias of choice (left leaning, in case you don’t know my flaming liberalism), CNN and The Hill are my news massages. (That’s right, massages, not messages.)

In the background my husband is winding up listening to The Today Show, because he knows I won’t watch it any more. And he follows it up with Megan Kelly, which I can’t abide under any circumstances. But this day I’m not deep into my reading yet, and I hear in the background the voice of Savannah Guthrie, Today show anchor, who is co-hosting with Megan this week. And I hear her saying, paraphrased, that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have hit another difficult patch in their divorce, and that reporters ought really to leave them alone, give them their privacy, and not exploit their dirty laundry.

And as rapid as the mind can be, I’m thinking good for her! Standing up for pure, responsible journalism, and on a fluff show like Megan’s! At the same time, as I hear her saying, but let’s look into this story and see what’s going on with their child custody and child support issues.

And in a New York minute I’m yelling at the TV, at Savannah specifically, for being a Harvard-educated lawyer-turned carnival barker, for being a hypocrite and sensationalist shill.

This is where we’ve arrived as a nation. And it can’t be blamed entirely on the fact that our president is a reality show celebrity who believes news is fake.

With the advent of Entertainment Tonight in 1981, modern America began flirting with the world of entertainment as hard news. The quasi-news show gave us Hollywood gossip disguised as news using the TV news format, with hosts like the lovely John Tesh and Mary Hart to deliver the goods.

If you’re old enough you can remember some of what followed. TV Guide expanded its physical size and scope to compete with the tabloids at the grocery checkout. The weekly print magazine Entertainment Weekly began publishing Hollywood news and gossip in full, shiny detail. People Magazine expanded its coverage to personalities who were famous for nothing more than being famous. And a gaggle of clones appeared to pander to America’s growing appetite for dirty laundry, as referenced above and inspired by the deaths of John Belushi and Natalie Wood.

Sensationalism as news was new again, and bigger and better than yellow journalism or Hedda Hopper ever were.

Now technology has increased the dirty laundry exponentially.

Is it any wonder that during any given news cycle President Trump can shout “Fake News!” and get away with it? Is it any wonder that his base will accept his versions of events as real news because it is sensational, delivered at full bore and covered by the legitimate news?

What brought on my insufferable news snobbery?

A couple of weeks ago we revisited the short-lived (three seasons, 2012-2014) Aaron Sorkin/HBO series The Newsroom. Centered on moderately conservative news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), the stories revolve around the metamorphosis of a failing cable news show on fictitious Atlantis Cable News, from relatively soft, inoffensive news reporting to cutting edge, hard-hitting, suspenseful, morally upright and highly righteous news. We are shown the transformation of a right-wing moderate to a more middle-of-the-road persona with a huge (and overbearing) moral compass.

While the show is melodramatic in its character of Will McAvoy (and that level of self-righteousness couldn’t be sustained, even by writer Sorkin, who gave us “The West Wing”), and it is great TV fare that was based on current events as they were happening, it also re-educates watchers about the nature of pure journalism and its guiding principles.

Specifically, one doesn’t race to be first at the expense of being accurate. One verifies stories with at least two reliable sources. One does not editorialize without identifying it as such. One does not use the news to preach to the public, to sensationalize facts, or to elevate to news that which is really gossip.

In today’s real world we are left with few pure sources of actual news.

America wants to be titillated, entertained and spoon-fed. To actively listen to PBS News Hour takes effort and critical thinking to absorb happenings around the world. Listening to BBC World News on NPR is not “elevator music” for “inquiring minds.”

It would be understandable if one were to suspect that I am jealous of the likes of Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotbe and Megan Kelly, who laugh all the way to the bank with their Ivy League educations and their multi-million dollar network contracts. There may be a kernel of truth to that. (I have failings!)

But in the end, who is left who truly stands on the shoulders of the Cronkites, the Brokaws, the Richard Engelses, to give us uncompromising information?

I recall back in the 1950s when Today was a new concept in morning television.  Host Dave Garroway insisted that the show be called the Today program, because it was not a “show.” He was rewarded for his semantic stand by being “co-hosted” by J. Fred Muggs, a chimpanzee brought in to help with ratings. Ah, entertainment value and the greenback dollar.

I know I’m a snob. I’m the health food nut of news consumption who rails against the fast food and empty calories of BuzzFeed and Fox News.

Thanks a lot, Boston Globe’s Spotlight, Washington Post, New York Times, Ben Bradlee, and Woodward and Bernstein.

You’ve ruined me for morning and evening mass media news television, and the check-out line.