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  The Society for Consumer Advocates and Mavens

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TOXIC TV NEWS MEDIA IN A TOXIC SOCIETY

Today, TV news organizations and TV entertainment companies go to great lengths to maximize profits, out-do each other and win larger and larger shares of the available audience resulting in larger and larger profits. Sensationalism in TV news coverage becomes compelling and inevitable. Crises are contrived. Controversy is stirred up. "Crisis-casting" is the bad side of the news gathering business, to spin discord and scandal while favoring disaster, outrage, conflict, injustice and fear. Good news is all but edged out! The worrisome preferences of the newscasters and reporters become a self- fulfilling prophecy providing a distorted view of the world from a somewhat one-sided perspective--dismal.

Ambient "noise", filled with shop-at-the-mall solutions and created crises obscure and impair any mature understanding of the world around us. Consider the innocent children who get turned into "TV junkies". Imagine the theft of their imagination then add in junk food, questionable music, absentee parenting and watch a typically innocent child develop into a obsessive, self-centered, neurotic lost soul in a sea of TV trivia. A capitalist economy fuels a "toxic media" and both can be criticized for exploiting children. Critics call this "soul erosion" and money cannot fix the problem. Molding children to be addicted to consumption over conservation violates their free spirit and is an inexcusable waste of life and energy. Limiting the amount of time children watch TV may help cleanse the mind and put "meaningful" life into perspective.

What TV news and entertainment managers fear most is viewers losing interest in network programming which leads to lower audience ratings, hence losses of advertising revenues!

To keep you "tuned-in", has TV news reports ever discovered anything less than amazing or astonishing? Reporters may take advantage of your fears, insecurities, weaknesses and vulnerabilities to create a sensational story where there may be no sensational story. Sensational storytelling in TV news is more fun, easier and more profitable because it can deliver higher audience ratings and advertising revenues compared to making the effort to report on events fairly and accurately which could bore viewers. It can be boring and, due to time limitations, even next to impossible to try and boil down complex, fast moving events into a story that is fair to the "whole" issue and/or all the parties involved. So why bother? A fair and accurate TV news story may just prove to be boring if all the facets of a story are covered fairly. A "good" story needs action, reaction, emotion, passion and confirmation, like in confirming one's own suspicions. The story must MOVE the audience if it is to sell a point of view. By this standard, fairness in TV news does not contribute to a "good" news story.

Family-oriented or nice TV news stories do not typically get big audience ratings. However, one-sided, negative, reputation-destroying, distorted TV news does! Too many times the unspoken rule around a TV news department is, "Let's nail this guy!" This is "gotcha" journalism and can be a real ratings-getter and, in time, be a good advertising revenue generator for the show.

When you get "nailed" by the press or the media it is not that you really deserved it, but it just so happens to be your turn (in life) to take the "hit", so to speak, because you are there! You are kind of like fresh meat to the journalists who delight in coming after you!. Remember, oftentimes it is the "C" student in high school that gravitates to journalism and media classes. Typically, the smarter "A" and "B" students gravitate toward more honorable careers like law and medicine.

SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: ADBUSTERS MAGAZINE SPRING 1997

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