And that’s the Way It Is

The race’s deepest separation from God is epitomized by ‘the journalist,’ ” wrote Kierkegaard. “If I were a father and had a daughter who was seduced I would not despair of her. I would hope for [her] salvation. If I had a son who became a journalist and remained one for five years, him I should give up.”

Many American evangelicals are equally critical of journalists. In The Hidden Censors, the Reverend Tim LaHaye argues that the media have been “taken over by men and women who for the most part do not share our traditional values. It [sic] has been seized by people who are much more godless, immoral, or amoral in their outlook than are the American people as a whole.” LaHaye believes that “media bias” is the result of secular humanist control of the media.

Because Americans are increasingly dependent upon the big-three networks for their picture of the world, we should focus our critical attention on television news. Network news is the major provider of what journalist Walter Lippmann called the “pictures in our heads” of “the world outside.” Americans get more of their news from television than from any other medium. In fact, two-thirds of us turn primarily to television for news and information, while the percentage of adults who read a newspaper is declining, and few cities can support competing dailies. Without the sports pages and coupon sections, papers would be in even deeper financial trouble.

There is a big difference, however, between enlightened critcism and naïve suspicion. Unfortunately, many Christians hold a simplistic and dangerous view of TV news. They believe that TV news is simply the handiwork of immoral or liberal reporters, who reject stories that seem to contradict their own biases. It is not. TV news is shaped by both the picture-tube gurus who make it and the bored viewers who consume it. The tube tells news stories both for the financial gain of its creators and the story appetite of its audiences.

The Bad News

The biggest myth about network news is that its bias is primarily political. There is little doubt that reporters, editors, and producers of these programs are more liberal politically and morally than the population overall. This is in part because such journalists are members of the liberal Eastern establishment. It is also the result of their formal education in liberal colleges and universities. Finally, network news people are more liberal simply because of the natural selection process that takes place in the profession; journalism attracts many people who are likely to question the status quo and hold altruistic ideals about improving society.

But there is very little evidence that journalists’ own beliefs and values determine the ways that news is selected and reported. Michael Robinson found in 1985 that news is more negative than political; there were 20 times more bad than good news stories. In 100 days the networks made only 47 positive statements. At the same time, there was very little political bias.

Vice-President Spiro Agnew addressed this phenomenon in his legendary antimedia speech in Des Moines while the Nixon administration was under press scrutiny. He called the news media “nattering nabobs of negativism,” an image supported by Robinson’s findings and often translated by all of us as “no news is good news.” Columnist James Reston wrote that TV news “encourages the view that everything is going wrong, and erodes the optimism of the American people, which may still be the last hope of the Western world.”

Consider the two major religious news stories of 1987—the Jim and Tammy Bakker scandal and the visit of Pope John Paul II. The former dribbled bad news to the media for months. The latter was repeatedly reported as an attempt to shore up American support for a declining church that opposed the Pope’s stands on important moral and social issues. On network television, the Pope’s homilies were often set against demonstrations by disenchanted American Catholics, including homosexuals and former priests.

The upbeat news story, if it appears at all, is usually reserved for the end of the newscast. Its purpose is to reassure us that in spite of all of the signs of imminent disaster reported in the previous 20 minutes, we can rest assured that the world will survive and that the show will be back on with more news tomorrow evening. (Of course, it would also be nice if we stayed tuned for the game show coming next instead of running off to pray for the fallen world.)

Television’s political power rests largely on its ability to deliver emotional appeals and social conflicts directly to our living rooms. The medium forced change when it focused on the antics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, freedom marches in the South, battles in Vietnam, and the Watergate hearings. But there is no guarantee that such compelling TV coverage is authentic. On television, the line between fact and fiction, propaganda and news is sometimes very thin because TV news is dramatic storytelling about power and conflict.

Reporters As Raconteurs

What kinds of pictures of the world does network news project into our living rooms? The news is not a mirror of society, but a collection of stories about society. Like poetry or paintings, news is a human creation that frequently says as much about its makers and viewers as it does about its subjects. Without reporters and editors there would be no news as we know it.

The networks package the news as narratives. They are not so much interested in data or information as much as they are stories and anecdotes. Except for stock market reports or economic indicators, nearly everything on national news is a story about people and nations. Dan, Peter, and Tom ask us to sit on their laps while they and their journalistic acolytes tell us tales and teach us lessons.

Network-news bias stems primarily from the desire of reporters and editors to entertain audiences. Interesting tales require compelling characters—Gary Hart, Pat Robertson, Jesse Jackson, Jim and Tammy Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart. Outspoken and well-known members of Congress are tracked down for their on-camera reactions to presidential decisions or international events. Even the televised images of crowds of anonymous demonstrators nearly always focus on the most outrageous or the most flamboyant of the marchers. Reports from Iran during the holding of American hostages were loaded with such character bias. Arab stereotypes are frequently fueled by the camera, making it increasingly unlikely that public opinion will cause the American government to shift its Middle East foreign policy.

Some characters are deemed too important in the drama of news not to play at least a minor role. In spite of all of the careful White House management of media access to President Reagan, our nation’s chief officer may well go down in videotape history as the President who spent most of his time walking back and forth on the lawn between the White House door and an air force helicopter. The President’s waves and cupped ears have probably accounted for hours of network news time during his second term.

Crafty Conflict

Television news also thrives on dramatic conflict. Like all good storytelling, TV reports follow the battles between individuals, groups, and organizations. We tune in to hear the latest in the struggles among nations, politicians, and activists. During presidential campaigns, we track the primaries and eventually the general election, waiting for the dénouement that signals a new resident of the White House. Reports suggest who is winning, who is losing, and how they are reacting to the shifting winds of political fate.

But presidential politics is only the most obvious example of network television’s insatiable appetite for character and conflict. When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited the United States, the networks immediately turned the negotiations into a showdown between the Great Communicator and the sly and debonaire Soviet official. Meanwhile, the subplot was painted by the tube: Mrs. Reagan and Mrs. Gorbachev, locked in a struggle to see who could better impress the other.

The men were in an image-making shoot-out, while the women entered a popularity contest. Foreign policy seemed to depend on these two conflicts, as if the months of preparations before the summit were mere cartoons before the real movie. As close observers know, the contours of such meetings are hammered out well in advance. Reagan would not make the same mistake of the hastily called summit in Iceland. Only network TV dramatics could hinge the latest U.S.-Soviet meetings on communication styles and etiquette.

News coverage also follows the scent of conflict identified by interested news sources. More stories are leaked to news organizations than most of us would believe. Informants hope to draw their enemies into public conflict either to discredit them or to advance their own careers. As a result, much of the conflict in America takes place, not directly between contending parties, but through the media. Reporters and their sources conspire to create the most compelling stories possible. The Jim Bakker scandal illustrates this symbiosis. Ted Koppel invited the Bakkers onto “Nightline,” thus boosting the ratings to the highest in the program’s history. The Bakkers, in turn, told their side of the story to rally supporters they could no longer speak to on the “PTL Club.”

As ABC News reporter Dan Corditz has written, TV news anchors are not paid seven-digit salaries for their journalistic abilities. “At the top,” says Corditz, “they are the salaries of entertainers.” They are raconteurs who make a living by telling tales carved out of the characters and conflicts of real life. In The Disappearance of Childhood, Neil Postman writes, “A television news show is precisely what its name implies. A show is an entertainment, a world of artifice and fantasy carefully staged to produce a particular series of effects so that the audience is left laughing or crying or stupefied.”

The Myth Of Objectivity

Public-opinion surveys have found repeatedly that most Americans trust the news they get from network television. In one Roper study, 58 percent said network news is “neutral, objective and middle of the road.” A Gallup poll found that 81 percent of American adults believe that TV news is accurate. Ironically, 37 percent of the respondents also said that news media had reported inaccurately about stories they had been involved in personally. Other studies have shown repeatedly that viewers have little confidence in the television business, compared with other businesses and institutions in society. Nevertheless, they believe the news. Walter Cronkite was voted the most believable man in America.

For most of us, TV news is objective when we agree with it. As long as the networks do not challenge our prevailing views, they are doing fine. Such attitudes suggest that public-opinion polls tell us nothing about the objectivity of network news and a lot about our own biases.

In fact, objectivity is a meaningless term to describe or evaluate news. Sometimes the word is used to suggest balance, other times fairness, accuracy, or factuality. No two journalists would ever report the same story in precisely the same way. Nor would two editors agree exactly on the importance or significance of thousands of possible stories to report on every day. There is no objective standard of news because news never defines itself. Someone always has to decide what is news.

A few years ago I asked the managing editor of one of the nation’s largest-circulation newspapers what percentage of the copy available to the paper on a given day actually hits the presses. After a five-second pause he said, “Well, at most, 3 percent.” That was a newspaper. Consider the state of network news, where the complete script for a program would easily fit on one page of a newspaper. Add to that all of the videotape or film footage left unused for every newscast. What could objectivity really mean in such an incredible process of distillation?

Yet night after night we see basically the same few stories, often reported from the same perspectives on the three major commercial-network news shows. Moreover, those stories also are reported on the front page of the New York Times. How could this possibly happen so consistently?

News Smarts

The answer is not objectivity, but conventional news wisdom. Over the years editors and reporters have decided what to report and generally how to report it. They have sent correspondents to some places (e.g., the White House), and not to others (e.g., the CIA). They have covered particular meetings (e.g., the Iowa presidential caucuses) while skipping others (e.g., the National Association of Evangelicals). Their coverage of some events has changed significantly even in the last ten years; only a few elections ago few major television reporters and anchors went to Iowa for the caucuses. If one of the networks introduces a new type of coverage, the others will usually follow; none wishes to be beaten in image or, more important, in the ratings.

As a result, much of American society is normally outside the lens of network news. This was true of evangelical Protestantism until the 1980 presidential election when the news media, unable to explain the overwhelming support for Ronald Reagan, searched for political answers in the actions of the Moral Majority, the Religious Roundtable, and other groups. Generally speaking, religious faith is not newsworthy unless it has obvious and easily reported connections to politics or social issues. Richard Neuhaus has appropriately called journalists “religious illiterates.”

But the limits of journalistic “objectivity” do not stop there. American network news is incredibly ethnocentric. As James R. Larson documents in Television’s Window on the World, our TV sets capture little of the scope of international affairs. From 1972 to 1981, 90 percent of all network news covered the U.S., the Soviet Union, or Israel. “This lack of network news attention to the ongoing struggle for social change and development in the Third World,” says Larson, “gives U.S. policymakers broad leeway to ignore, minimize, or postpone consideration of such problems.”

Promoting The Powerful

Modern network news is also tilted toward powerful individuals and institutions. In its day-to-day telling of tales, the news cares little about the weak and disenfranchised. Few New York or Washington correspondents could get to their offices every day without passing street people. Yet how often does what these journalists actually see appear on the nightly network stage? Little is mentioned about prostitutes or alcoholics, about the “unimportant” problems of depression, poverty, and even hopelessness. Instead we see and hear about “officials” in and out of government who are supposedly in charge of nations, states, and municipalities.

Similarly, the simple joys and pleasures of life are missing from the network news. How often do we see acts of kindness, expressions of love, or signs of generosity—except at the end of the “real” news? Thousands of sick and lonely people were visited by friends and pastors, but who really cares? Perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans asked and were granted forgiveness for minor and major transgressions. Is forgiveness ever a significant news event? Many worshiped and prayed in churches and homes across the land. According to the network news lens of power, these are unimportant events in the life of the nation.

Could it be that the manifestations of power reported on television have little significance in the kingdom of God? Is the latest Washington scandal necessarily more important than the loving acts of Mother Teresa’s thousands of volunteers, the rehabilitation of convicted criminals through Prison Fellowship, or the feeding of the homeless at soup kitchens? Perhaps TV news is a parade of power and pride that masquerades as a mirror of authority and truth. Do we all fool ourselves by believing that people who appear on TV news are actually more intelligent, faithful, or compassionate than others?

Watching The World

In the novel and film Being There, author Jerzy Kosinski describes the emotionless world of a man raised on television instead of human love and nurture. “Chance” never learns how to relate to others and to shape the world around him. In biblical terms, he lacks both dominion and responsibility for creation because he simply assumes that the real world is entirely separate from his own being—just like television programming, which remains the same regardless of whether we watch. He cannot act, but only react; like the ideal television viewer, he sits passively before life, unable to do anything significant except change the channel.

As Richard Neuhaus has written in The Naked Public Square, news gives us the illusion of power. Because it reports on supposedly powerful individuals and institutions, network news generates the false impression that we actually participate in the tales told. In fact, we participate only vicariously in the news. Like Chance, we merely react to the “important” stories at the appointed times. The power displayed on the tube eclipses our own authority as caretakers of creation and brothers and sisters of mercy, justice, and peace.

Of course, there are unusual television news stories that bring people together: a girl trapped inside a well for several days, the assassination of a President, the outrageous taking of innocent hostages by terrorists. However, these stories also suggest the powerlessness of the audience. We might send a get-well card or a gift. But mostly we sit and watch, hoping and praying that good will come out of tragedy. We are largely spectators of a world narrated by the networks.

At the end of Being There, Chance is about to enter politics at the top as a presidential candidate. Politicians and the media have unwittingly conspired to create a convincing public image for a man who lacks any human trait. In real life he is a nobody; on the tube he is a celebrity. Chance fools the public only because he has first fooled the CIA and the media moguls, who cannot find anything on him in their files. He is the only possible candidate without known faults or political liabilities. His authority stems not from what he has accomplished or from political connections, but from his own powerlessness.

In their quest for “the story” behind Chance, the media create a real-life tale of political absurdity. The problem is that the media do not see their own role in propelling Chance into the national political limelight. For them Chance is merely another powerful character worth a news story. The media never realize they gave Chance his authority. As the national storytellers, they created the very story they claimed only to be reporting.

Network news reporters receive their authority from the faithful audiences measured in ratings. But do they really deserve such power to define news? During 1988 many political pundits argued that the presidential campaign was unique because neither the political community nor the news media knew what would happen as the election drama unfolded. Larry Eichel of the Philadelphia Inquirer sees it differently. “The truth is that we never have any idea what is going to happen,” writes Eichel. “What makes the 1988 campaign unique is that this time we know we have no idea of what is going to happen. That awareness of our limitation just may be our saving grace.”

Someone must decide the news, and it is certainly not going to be the viewer, no matter what the ratings suggest. Today network reporters have the authority to tell stories to passive audiences. Like Roman citizens, we wait to see what spectacles will be unleashed for our amusement and entertainment. When the lions are done, we leave the arena and return to what the public media have convinced us are dull lives. Fortunately, tomorrow will usher in new tales created just for our pleasure. And that’s the way it is in a fallen world.

Quentin J. Schutze is professor of communications arts at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the author of Television: Manna from Hollywood? (Zondervan).

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