Stewart brings up a lot of good points criticizing the current way the media discusses issues. Media organizations today do not really want to inform people about current situations or encourage discussion about topics. Instead their main concern is attracting viewers regardless of the reasons for why those viewers are watching the news.
Stewart points out several ways CNN in particular fails to accurately inform viewers or encourage discussion about topics. One criticism is the lack of overall coverage. He shows that CNN covers issues that are popular rather than issues that are significant. For example Stewart brings up how CNN covers Sunday football games but fails to cover a protest in Washington. Stewart's second criticism is that CNN fails to do successful fact checking on significant topics. He points out that CNN checked SNL sketches, which the general public assumes is exaggerated, while they failed to check numerous sources regarding the health care issue or the success of Obama's reforms. Stewart goes on further to criticize the way that CNN cuts off discussions about issues even though they are a twenty-four hour news station. Additionally when they cut experts off they then present news that is insignificant or even trivial, such as youtube videos.
If these topics were discussed in an academic setting the issues that Stewart discussed would not be evident. In an academic setting certain facts and numbers would be agreed upon. There are studies on how many people can not afford healthcare and similar issues. Furthermore, in an academic setting any facts would be checked if there was any disagreement on the validity of the facts. Secondly an academic debate would never be cut off each side would present their arguments and rebuttals, and discussion would be ended at an appropriate time. Academic discussions however have a very different goal from a TV news station, and it is because of this that the two differ so greatly. A academic discussion tries to inform it's audience and encourage discussion about a topic. A station such as CNN only wants to produce a program that attracts viewers.
I agree with most of your analysis of how CNN does a poor job presenting news. Like you said, the station tends to focus on stories that aren't very important, and it normally does not properly cite or check sources for validity. As for your closing sentence, I certainly agree with it. The news has very different goals from academic discourse, which often results in the news being less credible and less news-worthy than discussions from academic discourse.
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting point that you make about how CNN covers events that are not particularly newsworthy- especially for what family it is in general. However overall, maybe the television network would benefit from ignoring certain topics, sports included. Then, it would ignore the basics and begin a career in pyrotechnics.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you are saying when talking about how CNN is not accurately reporting the news and focusing more on trivial issues such as sporting events. I also agree that fact checking is a necessary step in order for CNN to become as informative as academic discourse is. I also agree with your last sentenece. It seems as if in public discourse the goal it to win and not to inform.
ReplyDeleteYou are right in pointing out that news stations such as CNN are more interested in reporting popular, not necessarily important, news that will attract more viewers. Because of this, they even spend time showing insignificant Youtube videos instead of using that time to foster more intellectual argumentations.
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