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August 03, 2004
Why you should get your news from the Internet
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Reading the Script
Reading the Script
By PAUL KRUGMAN
A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news.For example, last summer, when growth briefly broke into a gallop, cable news decided that the economy was booming. The gallop soon slowed to a trot, and then to a walk. But judging from the mail I recently got after writing about the slowing economy, the script never changed; many readers angrily insisted that my numbers disagreed with everything they had seen on TV.
If you really want to see cable news scripts in action, look at the coverage of the Democratic convention.
Commercial broadcast TV covered only one hour a night. We'll see whether the Republicans get equal treatment. C-Span, on the other hand, provided comprehensive, commentary-free coverage. But many people watched the convention on cable news channels - and what they saw was shaped by a script portraying Democrats as angry Bush-haters who disdain the military.
...But the real power of a script is the way it can retroactively change the story about what happened.
On Thursday night, Mr. Kerry's speech was a palpable hit. A focus group organized by Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, found it impressive and persuasive. Even pro-Bush commentators conceded, at first, that it had gone over well.
But a terrorism alert is already blotting out memories of last week. Although there is now a long history of alerts with remarkably convenient political timing, and Tom Ridge politicized the announcement by using the occasion to praise "the president's leadership in the war against terror," this one may be based on real information. Regardless, it gives the usual suspects a breathing space; once calm returns, don't be surprised if some of those same commentators begin describing the ineffective speech they expected (and hoped) to see, not the one they actually saw.
Luckily, in this age of the Internet it's possible to bypass the filter. At c-span.org, you can find transcripts and videos of all the speeches. I'd urge everyone to watch Mr. Kerry and others for yourself, and make your own judgment.
I gave up on televised media, other than C-span for watching speeches and such, months ago. I get my news from a wide variety of sources, and read the blogs on my blogroll to fill in the blanks of what I've missed. I think most of the people that I know get their news that way now, many of them from a mailing list I frequent where a couple of us news junkies pass along the important stories and opinion columns.
Unfortunately, most people get whatever awareness of news events they have from television, and at least 40% seem to get theirs from Fox news and Rush Limbaugh. Those of us who have traveled abroad have some realization that what the rest of the world sees is very different from our own media. There, the news is the news and entertainment is entertainment. Here, we have the blur of infotainers who give people the impression they are being informed, when, in fact, they are being manipulated.
When I was in high school, I took a class in language and its use. I remember reading classics like Hayakawa's "Language in thought and action". I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand how language is used to manipulate opinion. I wish it were still required reading in high schools.
Posted by donna at August 3, 2004 11:34 AM