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TV NEWS SENSATIONALISM
In the 1980's the U.S. Congress relinquished a lot of its control of the public airwaves
letting competitive forces set the standard as broadcast licenses were allowed to be
bought and sold in a matter of days! So, all of a sudden everybody with "deep pockets"
(money) started getting into the TV news business.
This activity acted to cheapen or lower the standards of excellence and fairness in news,
once upheld as a moral imperative for network TV news products, because now with so
many new TV news networks, tabloid TV news shows, TV news magazine shows and
various new owners, managers and producers of these new TV networks and news
products that all of them end up fighting for ratings and a significant share of the same
available audience. This is when "sensationalism" in TV news reared its ugly head!
Sensationalism in TV news reporting always creates more interest in the news products
from the available audience of viewers when compared to TV news doing more or less
objective stories on obscure, less visual, often boring topics.
Consequently, writing subjective, outrageous, emotionally-charged, polarizing, dramatic-
for-dramatic-sake news stories, instead of writing objective TV news, gets better
audience ratings. Better ratings automatically means the shows make more money since
advertisers are charged advertising rates or prices that reflect ratings or the amount of
people tuned in to the news and news entertainment shows.
Checkbook journalism also plays a part in the sensationalism and may be the norm! This
is when news people may outright pay for exclusive TV news interviews and stories, or if
they feel paying people for news exclusives is unethical they may hide how they pay for
"exclusives" via "storyteller" consulting fees and first class travel and accomodations for
the storyteller!
In addition, advertisers, owned by the corporate conglomerates which today own the TV
news networks, may covertly demand more supportive and positive news coverage, and
they may get it because the TV news networks must now be careful not to threaten the
profits of their financial backers--the advertisers which are owned by the corporate
conglomerates which own the TV news networks!
Granted, it is a news person's job to find conflict, problems as well as report the wins, the
losses, the horror, the shameful, the greedy, the victory, defeat or upset and generally
expose anything which "disturbs the nest", so to speak. Today, however, due to the often
liberal agendas of the writers, producers, editors and the TV news show management,
consciously or unconsciously, they may seek to gain the viewers' trust through TV news
sensationalism masquerading as factual, truthful news so they can covertly expose the
audience to endless streams of propaganda, spin control, hidden agendas, selective-biased
reporting and other misleading, untruthful information!
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