Why I don’t watch television news

March 5, 2007

The Walter Reed scandal has been a major news story for two weeks, but Friday was especially important. Maj. Gen. George Weightman, the head of Walter Reed since August, had just been relieved of his command. The House Oversight and Government Reform started issuing subpoenas. Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired Army Secretary Francis Harvey because of his handling of the controversy.

How did the major news networks cover these developments? On just Friday, CNN referenced the Walter Reed outrage 53 times, and mentioned Anna Nicole Smith 40 times. Considering that we’re talking about the death of a C-list celebrity three weeks ago, as compared to an ongoing Washington scandal about the treatment of U.S. veterans, that’s not an encouraging ratio.

But as it turns out, CNN was the responsible network on Friday.

Our national media embarrassment was again on full display on Friday. Both MSNBC and Fox News devoted more coverage to Anna Nicole Smith — three weeks after her death on Feb. 8 — than they did to the multiple developments involving the neglect and deplorable conditions at Walter Reed military hospital.

The most lop-sided coverage by far was aired by Fox News, which featured only 10 references to Walter Reed compared to 121 of Anna Nicole — roughly 12 times the coverage. MSNBC featured 84 references to Walter Reed and 96 to Anna Nicole.

ThinkProgress compiled a reel of lowlights from Friday’s coverage that’s definitely worth watching — if you want to fully appreciate why most television news is unwatchable.

Hey! Look over there!

  • Five years from now Fox “News” will still be reporting. “In National News tonight, Anna Nicole Smith is still dead.”

    Don’t be too harsh, CB. Anna Smith is dead. The soldiers were only wounded. Priorities. Prioties. Sort of news triage.

  • I wonder how the coverage compares to Obama’s “wasted” coverage and Kerry’s blown joke coverage.

  • It’s pretty frustrating to watch the TV. I usually just watch to see what is not being reported. I’ve found that I only have to watch about every three days to get the gist of things on the tube.

  • Faux had to run with ANS as it would do little for the morale of the deluded if they found out that their dear leader didn’t really give a damn about their sons and daughters. They run on the same principle as any propaganda machine does, WWILD? aka What Would Imperious Leader Do?

    No propagandist worth their salt is going to risk their “career” to show the Imperious Leader in all his crowning stupid glory. What better to cover that up with the DD breasts of a mentally unstable dead exPlaymate.

  • Tabloid television has come of age. We’re all sickened by the focus on marketing and audience share with an dumbed-down audience that has been created after more than a decade of resolute corporate control of the media. I noticed that CNN Headline “News” also spent a great amount of time endlessly replaying Coulter’s slur of Edwards, spending minimal time showing half-hearted “tsk-tsking” while pushing the latest Beck poppycock.

  • ***Five years from now Fox “News” will still be reporting. “In National News tonight, Anna Nicole Smith is still dead.”***
    —————————Dale

    No, Dale; five years from now, FUX news (pardon the mis-spelling; it’s quite intentional) will be airing a daily dose of Anna sightings by legions of Blatz-swilling, knuckle-dragging, protohumans who have been outsourced to the NRCC Zoological Society. That is, of course, if they’re still on the air. Some of their “affiliates” are still running on analog-signal technology. I sense an “extinction event” in the offing, because Rupert’s money isn’t going to last forever….

  • Howard Beale :
    I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job…We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes [or suicide bombers in
    Baghdad] as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please,
    at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’

    Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

    All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad.

    [shouting] You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has
    VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, [shouting] ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and
    yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil
    crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:
    [screaming at the top of his lungs] “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT
    GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE

  • I never ever watch TeeVee News. About twenty years ago my wife and I realized we were watching news in the morning before I left for campus. Then we’d watch an hour of local news and an hour of national news around dinner time, along with another half hour before bed. Over three hours of hairdos and smiles wasn’t worth it. We’ve never regretted that decision.

    In fact, it lead to another very helpful one: taping the few regular shows we do watch and zapping all their commercials. The only offering for which can’t do this is baseball, and it’s much better on the radio anyway (even if our Mariners are playing losing).

    We get our news now from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, our lBellingham Herald, the NY Times online (Times Select for the columnists and crosswords), and a few other online papers … and, of course, the BEST portal for everything plus commentary, The Carpetbagger Report.

  • go scan the nets and the cable schlock from last week, and see how much coverage they gave to iglesias-gate …. which, to me, is more horrifying even than walter reed.

    nada.

  • It’s not just Fox News. Keith Olbermann often rises to memorable heights with his political commentary, but he’s infuriating (and wasting my time) with his nightly references to Anna Nicole and Britney Spears.

  • Wasn’t it the idiots on the right that were complaining the major networks were “slanting the news” by covering the death and chaos in Iraq but not the “good news” from Iraq?

    So Faux Nooz isn’t slanting by omission, is that it? It’s tough to keep the propaganda protocol straight but I’ll do my best.

  • I only get Canadian national news where I live so thankfully don’t have to watch the US news at all. And they reported on the Walter Reed story, and do a much better job of covering Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

  • Tom Cleaver with the Howard Beale spiel – Excellent. Reminds me that I should make it a point to watch the movie again.

  • Who has time to watch the newtwork and cable TV news silliness when there is so much stuff posted on blogs to read and digest? I’d rather get some living in and have a blogger tell me what those knuckleheads said than watch their shows and waste life away. To paraphrase Howard Beale, “I used to mad as hell but now I don’t watch them anymore.”

  • I don’t watch TV news, for the same reasons expressed by others here. But I’m curious if anyone has the rating umbers for the nightly news on Fox, MSNBC and CNN last night. It would be interesting to see if there’s a correlation to those “nmumber of mentions” stats.

  • LOS ANGELES – The Medical Board of California acknowledged Thursday that it is investigating a Los Angeles doctor who, according to documents, authorized all 11 prescription medications found in Anna Nicole Smith’s hotel room the day the starlet died of a drug overdose.

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