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Journalists, Entertainers, or Educators?
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13963 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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2 / 1988 |
2,923 Words |
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John Silber
John Silber is president of Boston University. |
Trained to expect instant gratification from food, sex, and images of violence, Americans are further trained to expect instant gratification from the news. If the news cannot quite be popped like pills or munched like potato chips, we must at least try to achieve instant insight--bite-sized understanding. So broadcasters believe, it seems, at least to judge form American television practices. The industry operates on the educational theory that the viewer's attention span is 90 seconds. The fact that any good teacher can hold the attention of students for 50 minutes is conveniently ignored. And television, by imposing the 90-second standard, has thereby contributed to the illiteracy of those it should ideally be educating. Consider the effects of this on Americans' understanding of world issues and matters of grave national import. Instead of presenting the news coherently, it has reduced the news to a form of episodic entertainment--the "miniseries of reality."
The consequence of news treated as entertainment is a form of censorship. The president of the United States gives, let us suppose, a major speech. What happens? A commentator precedes the speech in order to "prep" the public by telling it in predigested form what the president is about to say. After the speech, a panel of commentators tells the public what the president has just said. In doing so, no commentator merely reports the president's words--that would be repetitive and would therefore lack entertainment value. Instead, he adds his own interpretation and emphasis. Next, politicians from the opposing party comment on the speech--but this is still not enough. Even more remote commentators are called upon to interpret the speech: Experts from other nations are summoned to tell us not only what our president said, but what it means. Finally, to cap things off, the network calls upon experts from the Soviet Union, who comment on the president's credibility. Can one imagine that during the Battle of Britain the BBC would have followed Churchill's speech "We will fight them on the land and on the sea..." by switching to Berlin for comment by Dr. Goebbels? Would the radio have followed FDR's fireside chats with a commentary by Herbert Hoover? Would our country have started to revive and rebuild if, following FDR's statement that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself," a series of pundits had come on to say how many different things there were to fear--such as joblessness, hunger, disease, and so on?
Journalists, like all of us, are subject to the temptations of power. Power tends to corrupt them no less than politicians. Many journalists come to think of themselves not so much as objective reporters as the loyal opposition. But it
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