Beating a dead horse

or, Why news isn’t really new

2005.05.09 — Business | Television | News | by BB Rodriguez

This is part two of a two-part article. Part one is available.

Who would ever have imagined that there isn't enough news in the world to fill 24 hours? Well, first of all, these networks don't report on the whole world, just the US and those select locations around the world that we are currently bombing. Still, you would think that they could uncover some pollution in Ohio or some corporate wrong-doing in New York or some municipal corruption in Chicago. The local papers seem to find enough to keep themselves busy every day.

But cable news channels are driven by a singular need to keep readers thruout the day. That's what they've found keeps them profitable. And to keep eyeballs glued to the set, a news channel can't report on different things. They have to tell a story.

Since CNN debuted, 24-hour news networks have found that one way to keep viewers tuning in is to create a soap opera. They pick a story and run with it, examining every aspect in minute detail, but only thru the eyes of pundits and legal experts, of course. Because, let's face it, there's only so much you can get out of the cops and the family.

A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Criminal cases are best:

• Someone is missing or dead.
• Someone has been found and/or arrested.
• And someone has been judged guilty or not guilty.

Criminal case soap operas alone are enough to sustain a channel of their own. Stay tuned for more analysis in the coming weeks!

Some events don't work out. The JonBenet Ramsey case was frustrating because, despite the news media's desperate finger-pointing, neither John and Patsy Ramsey nor anyone else was ever charged with the crime. Unsolved crimes are a pain the in ass for news people. How many people do you dedicate to the story? How do you budget time for it? Do viewers still care? Damn! Why don't they just arrest Patsy?! Who else could it be?! Answer: anyone. But no one else is "in the story."

The news lottery

Scott Peterson's case wasn't much different from lots of murder cases around the country—things that eventually show up on the Discovery Channel or A&E on the detectives shows. You know what Scott Peterson's real crime was?

Being accused of murder on a slow news day.

Being accused of murder on a slow news day meant that Scott Peterson won the news lottery. Every channel covered it, talked about it, got intrigued by it because not much else was going on, and POW! He's top-of-the-hour news every hour of every day for a year.

OJ Simpson won the news lottery because he was famous. So did Elizabeth Smart, but probably because she was a pretty white girl. Her story ended happily, but the news channels don't really care how the stories end; they are just desperate for a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end—preferably one that is horribly tragic or triumphantly uplifting (makes no difference which).

Real news stories—about corporate corruption, the destruction of the environment, political hypocrisy—don't get much play because it's impossible to turn them into soap operas (Enron being the exception that proves the rule). Once you lay the facts bare, there's not much story left to tell, especially if any guilty parties are able to just lie about their involvement without being called on it.

It's hard to research the facts to compare them with what people are doing or saying. Only top-notch wonky news veterans like Tim Russert can do that... well, Tim Russert and Jon Stewart.

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