Today people have zeroed in on many of the causes of growing violence in our American society, such as unrestricted access to military-grade weapons, mental illness, and terrorism. No one, however, has mentioned our obsession with around-the-clock opinion-news babble. This obsession seems to correspond to the growing violence in our country and around the world.
So-called news TV channels such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC strive to fill air time with what can only be called the babble of “talking heads” that appear to be in essence merely efforts to fill the void with no real news. Viewers can easily find a channel that supports their particular political point of view, which is our constitutional right, but abuses have grown in recent years. During the recent disgusting episode of violence in Dallas, I turned on the TV to find out how the violent event had ended, but to my dismay I ended up watching an hour of “talking heads” and irrelevant opinions before I finally learned that the police had used a robot to end the standoff. Years ago, news used to be limited to telling the facts to the public, and opinion was restricted to the opinion section of papers, TV, and radio news reporting, but unfortunately today it is blurred together.
This blurring together, I am sure, would make my college journalism instructor from the 1960s and ’70s roll over in his grave. I can still remember his insistence on core accepted ideas and principles of journalism that we were all to carry forward from his class. First, he showed us the various techniques of those who were using newspapers as propaganda for one agenda or another, such as leaving out certain news or the placement of it in obscure locations within the paper. But the most glaring example of manipulation was the placing of opinion within news stories. This is the practice used by the mega satellite and cable news outlets that keeps a major portion of our citizens glued to its allure. It is an allure that is bad for our political system and personal safety of our families.
This need to fill the void has also given rise to excessive coverage of those who commit the unthinkable in our society—basically a flood of free publicity that in years past you had to pay for on all media outlets. But today it fogs our political system with coverage of the most outlandish statements and events that are then hammered on by political pundits as they in turn try to defend or reject a particular statement. This excessive coverage also gives free airtime to the most depraved individuals in our society whether they are suffering from mental illness or a desire to go out in what they view as a flash of glory for some deranged cause. It is not good for our political system or for our personal safety. These are information trends that I am sure could not have been envisioned by our nation’s founding fathers.
In the political arena, the most glaring examples are politicians who know how to work and manipulate the opinion-news babble system with outrageous insults and derogatory comments. Once started by these statements, the babble goes on day after day. These manipulations were able to catapult one such individual to the very lead of a major party. Terrorists and the mentally ill, coupled with their ability to easily get military-grade weapons, have also managed to manipulate the news system to glorify their senseless killings as well as their own deaths. The large, free public stage for these activities needs to come to an end!
Good journalists in the past self-policed the boundary between news and opinion, but this is no longer the case as all the mega media outlets compete for ratings. News reporting in years past sought out the truth and was not based on repeating false and misleading statements. Perhaps it is time to limit the amount of airtime for good factual news to say an hour at breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime each day. Reasonable restriction can and should be placed on both gun rights and free speech to protect our physical safety. But better yet—and easier maybe—it is time for us all just to watch the nightly news each evening and stop watching CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, thus driving down the ratings of the mega networks that have blurred the distinction between news and opinion!
Ken McCalip is a North Santa Barbara County native who holds bachelor and doctorate degrees in history, cultural geography, and law from various California universities. He can be reached at kennethmccalip@yahoo.com. Send comments to the editor at scone@santamariasun.com or send a letter to the editor at letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 21-28, 2016.