shakran

But people WANT to know what's going on. I just checked the program listings for my TV for 10p tonight. Subtracting the news channels (my station, our 3 competitors, and the cable news nets), and not counting shopping or religious channels that no one watches anyway, there are 84 channels they COULD be watching, and yet hundreds of thousands watch my station, the three other stations, and millions watch the cable news channels. Why? They WANT to know what's going on.

It's our job to tell them what's REALLY going on, not a bunch of sensationalist bullshit. And I think if we gave it to them, they'd tune in. Look at NPR news. Ratings for NPR are excellent, they have so many people throwing them money every pledge drive that many NPR affilliates have THE nicest broadcast facilities in town by FAR. Minnesota Public Radio is a great example (they're one of the biggest state public radio systems). Look in that town at the rock stations and they've pretty much got the DJ stuffed into a closet. MPR's studios look like something out of a movie. Curved glass studios, state of the art equipment - it's a broadcasters paradise. They don't give you a bunch of sensationalist bullshit either. They file good reports, and despite what the conservatives would have you believe, are not a bunch of wingnut liberals who make shit up.

In other words, people WANT to consume good news. It's just very hard for them to find a good source for it. NPR is great but for much of the country it's not listenable. You can hear it all over Minnesota but if you cross the border to Wisconsin, many of the WPR stations are time-shared college setups with a 20-50 mile range. So the poor schmuck who's in a non-college town might not be able to tune in NPR. And even the guy IN the college town might only get NPR programming in the morning - the students then take over until midnight or later. If the TV stations give these people real news, I still believe they'll tune in.

The American people are stupid and ignorant because the media encourages it. And in a vicious cycle, they then encourage the media to keep putting stupid shit on the air because they don't have any other examples of what to demand.

Put it another way. If you grew up eating only meatloaf and carrots, you wouldn't run around demanding filet mignon EVEN though it's more sophisticated, and tastes better, because you wouldn't know what you were missing. BUT if someone started feeding you the good stuff, you'd usually choose it over "lowbrow" meatloaf.

I think it's the same with media. Sure, people would still from time to time tune out the news in order to watch Family Guy, but the drive to know what's going on in the world is large, and I think people would want to get their information from the best source possible. Currently, all sources are, despite what their promotions departments would have you believe, largely the same.

Regarding the BBC, first off, they're screwing up. That TV license fee should go to the BBC. No question. The government should not have the power to take that money away from them. The laws of the land should also specify that JOURNALISTS operate BBC. That would keep the BBC from doing nothing but air colorbars and collect the money.

Second, the fact that they're now having to compete for viewers isn't necesarilly such a bad thing. What IS a bad thing is that media execs are scared the public won't watch real programming. So they move the real stuff to a less-familiar channel and put "viewer magnets" on the old channels. Moving a show around is a sure way to lose viewers. And what's a worse thing is that the BBC is setting up to compete with ITSELF for viewers. That's just stupid. If one BBC station is airing news at a given time, all of them should air it. It's STUPID to make an important public trust compete with itself.

flamingdog

At the risk of driving this thread even further off topic...

I can't argue with you on the coverage of NPR, I'll have to take your word for that. But I do take issue with your assertion that people don't have genuine (or at least better) alternatives. I genuinely don't believe people will choose them when they have the quick 'n' dirty option over on the other channel. For instance, digital penetration (of the televisual variety, rather than the biological) is such in this country that BBC4 is viewable in a large proportion of the homes that can also view BBC1. And BBC4 programmes are often trailed (as is my understanding, at least) on BBC1. So why do we see stories about BBC4 facing the axe because people just aren't watching it? The choice is there. People don't take it.

Another example.

The three best-selling daily newspapers in this country are The Sun (3,192,976), The Daily Mail (2,341,437), and The Daily Mirror (2,114,496). Source: Audit Bureau of Circulation

The Sun and The Mirror are basically as lowbrow as they come. Celebrity gossip takes precedence over a real news agenda. Stories are heavily slanted, and sometimes even outright biased. Comment and analysis is simplistic at best, myopic at worst. And in the case of The Sun, every day on page three, we see a different topless woman. Basically dumb as a brick. The Sun takes a line on a story, you can guarantee that The Mirror, its immediate rival will take the opposite line (assuming it's not something unarguable like child porn or whatever).

Then there's The Mail, which is barely distinguishable from the above two titles, except it has a very high opinion of itself, an extremely right-wing attitude, and nicer fonts. It's passing itself off as intelligent, and it really isn't.

These are my opinions, but they are well reflected throughout the print media.

Then we have something like The Independent, which is probably (in my opinion) the best of the UK's national papers in terms of journalistic integrity, news values and intelligence. I generally - for the most part - find it balanced, rational, calmly-written and interesting. That's not to say it doesn't have its slants - it does. But it's hardly as phlegmatic in its opinions as the tabloids it shares the newstands with. Its circulation? 263,449. A tiny fraction of the readership of my other examples.

And it's not as if it's hard to find. It's on sale in my local supermarket, right next to the tabloids. It's even recently gone from broadsheet to tabloid (as in size) to make it more accessible. People don't choose it. To coin your example, they choose the meatloaf and carrots, even though the filet mignon (relatively speaking - no paper is perfect) is right next to it.

Now I don't know if there's an equivalent example in America, so that's perhaps where my argument springs a leak. But I genuinely don't have faith that people will choose the intelligent alternative when it is offered.

Actually, the BBC is a strange example, because they're not exactly competing on a level playing field. They depend on the government for their charter, which is what allows them to collect that licence fee. Problem is, the BBC isn't our government's favourite broadcaster by any means. Word is, Tony Blair dislikes the BBC and everything it stands for, and he's just one example. And they didn't win themselves any fans in Whitehall with that whole 'sexed up' Iraqi intelligence fiasco you may recall from a couple of years ago. The Hutton inquiry that followed that has certainly defanged the journalists to some extent, and has had the result of them sitting on 'exclusive' stories until other news outlets have broken them, to avoid drawing flak.

As far as the BBC competing with itself, yes, I agree completely. But the thing is, they have to show that they are fulfilling their duty of public service. If nobody is watching what they put on, because they're all tuned to Celebrity Jelly-making on the other side, then the 'we're performing a public service' argument falls down pretty fast. If it's such a great public service, why doesn't the public want it?

I guess we're not going to reach an agreement here. But it's been a fascinating discussion.

kutulu

Is it possible that the mining company sat on the truth because they knew that if they let it build a little bit all of the blame on the media would take away some attention on the real story?

BigBen

I heard that they sat on the info "Until they could say with certainty that the lives were truly lost, in considering the emotional and physical drain of the situation."

Thinking about it, the last thing I would want to do is say "Stop celebrating, they are all but one dead!" and then find out later that three had survived, or even two. I have been in emotionally and physically draining situations, and the first thing that goes is communication. People shut down, trying to come to terms inside, and that causes big delays.

No, I don't think the mining companies sat on the bad news for a malicious purpose. They were probably trying to think of the best way to tell the public. Sadly, there is none.

I think that companies that do not do everything in their power to address worker safety are worse than Enron, Worldcom and all of those other fuckers that everyone is upset about. These guys should go to jail, and the media should hound them until justice is found. Notice how big the Enron scandal is; compare that with the aftermath of this industrial accident.

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flamingdog

They jumped the gun big-time in pronouncing them all alive but one. It's hardly coincidence, surely, that it turned out they were all dead but one?

Ustwo

Before everyone ships the mine operators off in chains, the question is did the safety violations have anything to do with this?

Due to the nature of regulations and the danger in mining of any kind, its quite easy to have violations of code, which, while a violaton, are not something which would result in the loss of life.

Hell I had a safety violation in my office not long ago. A bulb was burned out in a back door exit sign.

If this is due to a problem they ignored, then please throw the book at them, but lets not over react. You are trusting the same media who reported the miners were alive after all to give you the info on the mine. At this point, in order to save a bit of their own face, I'm sure they will not be kind to the mine operators.

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flstf

I also grew up close to coal mining country and although I have never been in a mine I have several friends/aquaintances who lived and worked in those areas.

Safety is always a very important issue but one of the biggest concerns is the possibility that the mine(s) will be shut down due to heavy fines and regulation. In some of those small Appalachian towns the only work around is in the mines and the jobs pay very well for those areas.

It may be possible that in order to make the mines completely safe they will no longer be economically feasible. I know several miners who left their home towns and came north to southern Ohio to work in the auto plants, etc.