I don’t exactly ‘get’ the whole impeachment business. Joe Soaps like me need the complexities of events interpreted for us and usually journalists do that for us. The US hasn’t got a state broadcaster that they complain about all the time but still largely trust, like RTÉ or the BBC. For pay television networks, presentation of factual information isn’t the priority; retaining audiences and advertising revenue is. This is done by delivering news from a viewpoint that matches the beliefs of the audience and by valuing performative outrage over informative and reasoned discussion. And if you do happen upon a reliable source, how do you know if it’s reliable when everyone seems to be screaming ‘fake news’. And they’re not screaming it in protest against financial or political influence, they’re upset the news didn’t suit them or match their experience. It’s feckin’ exhausting.
What America needs is Tony Connelly.
Okay, so, in America there’s no state-funded broadcaster. News media is funded by advertising and advertisers needs audiences. Audiences only tune in to what they like. And it appears that the American public likes manic infighting, outrage at everything and endless shouting about how wrong the other person is. There’s a sports programme – a sports programme! – on ESPN in the afternoon every day where the pundits just shout over and back each other, feigning outrage at that unbelievable statement the last pundit just made and reacting with spluttering indignation to some nobody’s tweet. The news isn’t much better. Fox has to keep its ratings up and customers happy, so too does MSNBC and CNN. It’s rolling news so there’s a conveyor belt of pundits dropping in their tuppence worth just to fill in time, more concerned with boosting their own media profiles than thoughtful discussion. Imagine if the Niall Boylan Show was the news, and Ivan Yates and Joe Brolly were the pundits, and they were high. That’s what TV news here is like.
It’s not all doom; America has NPR (National Public Radio), an independent, non-profit media organization that’s kinda RTÉ-ish I suppose. And there’s PBS (Public Service Broadcasting) but news isn’t their main buzz, though they do brilliant documentaries. And yet, a recent survey found that the most trusted news sources in the US were the BBC, the Guardian and the Economist – all UK-based media outlets![1] State broadcasters are not perfect. RTÉ and the BBC will screw up sometimes, but they have earned our trust; they are our first stops when something happens. Despite the BBC’s ham-fisted attempts at ‘balance’, Ofcom found that the BBC ‘is treated as a primary source of news by 60% of people in the UK. Even 42% of Brexit party and Ukip voters get their news from the BBC’[2]. We give out about RTÉ all the time, but what was your trusted source when the Brexit deal was announced yesterday morning? I bet it was one of RTÉ’s platforms. There is no such source in the US; if something major happens with this impeachment business, where do I go? Fox will tell me he’s completely innocent and a genius, MSNBC will tell me he’s a crook who needs medical care, CNN will pad the hours will endless pundits and the internet will melt.
If you’re thinking that, “eh Doireann, Britain is sharply divided and has a state-broadcaster”, my response would be imagine how much worse it’d be without the BBC. It’s the newspaper outlets beholden to political and financial influence that fuelled that divide, and the BBC is doing its best to hold things together. And its best is sometimes a bit crap.
And then there’s the internet, which has led us to believe that we deserve or should be exposed only to the news we like. And has given everyone a platform to complain. Which means that when some hapless fool like me is trying to pick a news source, there are a million @John1916s telling me why it’s terrible – not because it’s corrupt or biased, but because it didn’t give due attention to the event that @John1916 cared about or printed something @John1916 is opposed to. To quote a Guardian article on this,
“All too often the charge of ‘bias’ means “that’s not my perspective”. Our screen-based interactions with many institutions have been fuelled by anger that our experiences are not being better recognised, along with the new pleasure of being able to complain about it”[3]
Guardian, 19 Sept. 2019
Couple that with all the people who just want to show off how worldly and alternative they are by dismissing an established news source, and where the hell am I supposed to get my news? And because all those people are howling so loudly about some columnist, how can I know when that news source has actually messed up? Example, I know enough about Northern Ireland history and the Good Friday Agreement that if the Daily Mail prints some blatantly Brexiteery nonsense about either, I’ll likely spot it. But here, in America, the sands are so constantly shifting that I cannot distinguish valid criticism from some crank who’s cross the Washington Post didn’t cover his ten-person protest in Kansas against red apples. And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that we’re all so overwhelmed with the media-storm that when senior government or commentating figures lie, there are no repercussions.
Will someone please just tell me what newspaper to read.
Neither RTÉ nor the BBC are perfect but they’re a damn sight more reliable than the circuses on offer here. If the likes of the BBC or RTÉ displease us, or fuck up, at least we can be confident that it was poor editorial judgement and not the overbearing hand of financial or political influence. They’re fair game for criticism but leave the howling and outrage for actual corruption and biases and misinformation, as opposed to something you simply didn’t like. And don’t be so hard on RTÉ. Take it from me, you’d miss it if it was gone.
[1] Reynolds Journalism Institute, University of Missouri, Trusting News Project Report 2017
[2] Jigsaw Research, on behalf of Ofcom, News Consumption in the UK: 2019
[3] The Guardian, ‘Why Can’t We Agree on What’s True Anymore?’ Thu 19 Sep 2019
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