UCLA's Hammer Museum.
Last night, I participated in a spirited UCLA/Hammer Museum Forum entitled “And the Winner is… The TV Networks.” Here is how event host and moderator Ian Masters framed the discussion:
With a large portion of the money that politicians raise for campaigns going to the television networks, do the media monopolies have any incentive to fix a system from which they benefit so profitably? Former CNN Chief News Executive Eason Jordan joins us to provide a perspective on the choice between social responsibility and the corporate bottom line. Leading media and culture scholar Toby Miller also joins us to examine the medium from which most voters get their political information.
Toby, Ian, and I disagreed with each other on several points, and several audience members took me to task during the Q & A (and vice-versa). The full video of the forum will be posted in a few days on the Hammer Museum Web site. Here is the transcript of my opening remarks:
Hammer Museum Forum
“And the Winner is… The TV Networks”
November 9, 2010
I have a confession to make… and I say this with a mix of pride, embarrassment, and disgust…..
Last week… I voted.
It could be worse… I could have not voted.
Thank goodness we live in a democracy.
Many people around the world do not have that privilege.
But, sadly, in my opinion, our democracy is sick… politics is now a blood sport… and the media are a big part of the problem.
Some of the political races this year were the nastiest many of us have ever seen.
Like many of you, I felt sullied by such grotesquely dirty politics.
Nevertheless, many of us voted because we felt it was the right thing to do.
Public opinion polls last week showed that most of us who voted… cast a negative vote… meaning we voted against people and issues, rather than for them.
Why so much negativity?
One major reason… as much as we might hate it… negative political advertising works.
So this year we were subjected to a nauseating avalanche of venomous campaign commercials that often portrayed the other candidate as a lying, cheating, thieving scumbag… who in some cases had a soft spot for rapists and murderers.
Political candidates and advocacy groups spent three-point-three billion dollars this year on media buys… mostly to deluge us with negative TV advertising.
Ian and the Hammer Center were right to call for a public discussion about the role of the media and money in this madness.
It’s fair to question whether news outlets can do a good, responsible job serving news consumers when arguably there’s a conflict of interest.
Media companies are paid billions of dollars by politicians willing to do or say almost anything to get elected. Now let me pause for a moment so I can avoid painting with too broad a brush.
There are admirable exceptions out there among media companies. Some news outlets accept little, if any, political advertising, and other news outlets that do accept campaign commercials still manage to provide first-rate political coverage.
I offer high-praise to the Associated Press, Politico, USA Today and some controversial news organizations… NPR, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the New York Times.
But none of those news outlets is perfect, and most others are much worse.
When it comes to political coverage by TV news outlets, all too often those channels inundate us with lame reporting, incendiary opinions, and inconsequential horse race tallies… without much depth, context or reality-checking.
When reporting on headline-making statements by politicians, TV news outlets often seem unwilling or unable to determine whether those comments are true.
That is a shame because it would be enormously helpful to us as news consumers and voters if more major news outlets made a habit of fact-checking and exposing politicians for their lies and exaggerations.
When it comes to political advertising placed on those media outlets… we are bombarded with factually-challenged campaign commercials… leaving many of us disgusted, disenchanted, and unsure of what is the truth.
Now, as far as I know, no one has a grand plan to right these wrongs for the sake of our democracy and our nation.
Even if such grand plan existed, I would bet against it ever being embraced and implemented by most politicians and media owners.
In my opinion, few, if any, politicians and media bosses wake up in the morning thinking… “What can I do today that is best for America?”
Here is what I believe is top of mind for them every day: In the case of most politicians… “How can I help myself and my supporters?”
In the case of most top media executives, “How can I help myself and my company, and boost my company’s profits?”
Now we are all selfish to a degree, and that’s fine.
There is nothing wrong with serving constituents and company shareholders. That is how big jobs are won and lost… how the political game is played… and how the private sector works.
But make no mistake about it: Most politicians and media bosses do not consider it a priority to make our democratic system healthy again.
As a result, we all suffer the consequences.
But all hope is not lost.
You can do more than you might think to cut through the media and political nonsense and get the facts, empowering you to make enlightened judgments and political choices.
Before I explain how, let’s look at the state of the news media today.
The news business has been transformed over the past two decades from being relatively level-headed and high-minded… to being mostly about making money.
I am generalizing here… perhaps unfairly so… but for the most part media company bosses answer to shareholders whose primary goal is making as much money as possible… not serving the public interest.
From a business standpoint, the owners of media companies face enormous challenges because the media landscape is more vast, competitive, and intense than ever.
Over the past decade, as online media surged… hundreds of traditional media outlets failed… surviving old media companies fired thousands of journalists… and a third of all serious journalism jobs vanished.
For the national broadcast TV network news divisions, viewership and revenues declined sharply.
That is because the vast majority of Americans ignore serious and thoughtful national TV news programs.
Let’s look at the broadcast network evening news programs…. ABC, CBS, and NBC.
Over the past 30 years, viewership of those programs is down 80% on a per capita basis.
Today, the average age of a broadcast network newscast viewer is 62 years old.
Why are those evening broadcast newscasts going the way of the dinosaurs?
Overwhelming competition, the Internet, and other forms of new media.
My guess is right now Toby Miller wants to jump out of his chair and point out that TV remains the most popular, most used media by the masses… and he is right.
But when it comes to serious and thoughtful news reporting, the future of our nation – young and middle-aged Americans – has largely tuned out the national TV networks.
I am not talking about only the broadcast networks.
For all the fuss about the cable TV news networks, only a small fraction of the American people watch them on an average day.
And those cable TV news viewers skew old, too.
The average Fox News viewer is 65 years old… the average CNN viewer is 63… and the average MSNBC viewer is 59.
The cable TV news networks make for a fascinating study in TV news viewing.
Here is what works for cable TV news networks: provocative, opinionated, and angry personalities and programs.
That explains the success of Fox News and MSNBC…. and the decline of CNN, which has struggled trying to stick to a relatively serious, middle-of-road news format.
So during the prime evening hours, right-leaning Fox News garners four times more viewers than CNN… and left-leaning MSNBC attracts twice as many viewers as CNN.
But on the whole, relatively few people watch those networks.
So where are the American people getting their news?
Most Americans say their primary news source is TV… but not national TV networks.
Most Americans say their primary source of news is local TV stations.
And, by the way, this year and every election year, most of the political advertising money went to those local TV stations, not to the national TV networks.
Here is the breakdown of where political TV advertising money went this year… 50 million dollars to the national broadcast networks… 150 million dollars to cable TV networks… and a whopping 2.2 billion dollars to local TV stations… including 150 million dollars to TV stations right here in Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of local TV stations fail to provide thoughtful, insightful political news coverage.
They refuse to deliver it… probably because evidence shows serious, in-depth political coverage prompts most viewers to change the channel.
Some Americans say they turn to newspapers or radio for news coverage, but the number of print and radio outlets in the serious news business is in sharp decline.
Commercial news-talk radio today is better known for vitriolic political diatribes from the right and the left… not reasonable reporting and analysis.
That takes us to new media… online media… and that is where you will find many younger and middle-aged news consumers.
Two-thirds of Internet news site users are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s – decades younger than the average broadcast network news viewer.
Thankfully, although there is a lot of junk online, the Internet also provides a vast supply of superb, trustworthy news content.
The challenge for you and me: finding that first-rate content… and going back to those reliable sources again and again.
With all the new media and old media outlets today, we have more sources than ever for news.
So the notion that media monopolies have a stranglehold on information or the media business is nonsense.
Media monopolies no longer exist.
If anyone wanted to argue the point, I would point to all the successful players on the Internet… to the hundreds of national TV channels… to the more than one thousand local TV stations that are the primary source of news for most Americans… and to the many owners of major media outlets.
Let’s look at the owners of those local TV stations… and determine whether the largest local station groups can be branded media monopolies.
This may surprise you.
The media company that owns the most local TV stations in the U.S. is Univision, with 61 stations.
I bet you have never heard of any of the other top five owners of local TV stations.
The second largest station group… Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcasting with 58 TV stations.
The third biggest ownership group is Missouri-based Newport TV… the fourth largest is Rhode Island-based Lin Broadcasting… and the fifth biggest is Alabama-based Raycom Communications.
Yes, ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC own local TV stations, too, but they own far fewer than they did a decade ago… and their local TV station revenues combined account for less than a third of local TV station revenues nationwide.
So let’s not point to the broadcast networks, their local station groups, or their parent companies as media monopolies… monopolies that do not exist today.
Ironically, back in the old days when some semblance of media monopolies existed, those media companies took their civic responsibilities more seriously than media companies do today.
Now, when it comes political commercials, you could argue media companies today should police themselves and politicians by refusing to broadcast campaign advertising unless it is accurate.
Or you could argue that the government should force broadcast outlets to limit political advertising to what is factual.
Both of those idealistic propositions are unrealistic non-starters.
Federal law compels local TV channels to broadcast a candidate’s advertising regardless of whether it is true, an exaggeration, or a bald-faced lie….
And U.S. law states that those local TV channels are not legally liable for any falsehoods broadcast in those campaign commercials.
That law applies only to advertising by candidates.
Local TV stations are not required to broadcast political advertising by third party advocacy groups… and TV stations are legally responsible for broadcasting false claims or allegations in advocacy group advertising.
But when it comes to a politician’s own commercials, TV stations are prohibited by law from applying a truth-o-meter test to determine whether to broadcast that advertising.
Any local TV station refusing to broadcast a politician’s commercial would be breaking the law and running the risk of losing the station’s government-issued broadcast license.
So, you might say, okay, lawmakers need to fix this problem. But that won’t happen… because who are the lawmakers?….
The same people who spend huge amounts of money on campaign commercials… mostly negative advertising.
Even if lawmakers authorized TV stations to apply a truth test to determine whether to accept campaign advertising… who would serve as the judge and jury in deciding what is the truth?
It simply will not happen.
In my view, the bottom line is this: The media will not and cannot take steps to fix these flaws in our democratic system unless forced to do so by lawmakers or the courts… and such intervention is highly unlikely.
Today, if you want civic responsibility, that responsibility falls to you… and all of us.
We must take the initiative… and work hard to educate ourselves.
I singled out some first-rate news sources a few minutes ago, and here are two more for you…. FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.org… both non-profit organizations dedicating to fact-checking statements made by politicians.
I also urge you to turn to ProPublica.org, a non-profit outfit that provides excellent enterprise and investigative reporting.
The Internet delivers us a lot of slop… but it also brings us quality reporting and analysis.
Those three outlets are prime examples.
We have the power at our fingertips to track down and consume first-rate reporting, analysis, and commentary.
But that requires us to have an intense curiosity and a determination to find and turn to accurate, fair, reliable sources of information.
Or we can take the easy way out and turn to lesser news outlets that feature limp reporting, inflammatory opinion, outraged show hosts, salaciousness, and scandal.
Yes, we should expect and demand more from our political leaders and our media.
But, in the end, first and foremost, we must hold ourselves accountable.
If we want to be smarter… if we want to make more enlightened judgments… if we want to be better citizens… that power is in our hands.
Thank you.
