Tina Brown:America's Endless News Loop ("integrity of information gone")

[papau]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14556-2005Mar30.html?nav=pq

America's Endless News Loop

By Tina Brown

Thursday, March 31, 2005; Page C01



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Besides, there's the fun of watching the performance transformation of the news hosts. Since the edict went out that all anchors have to turn themselves into "personalities" to avoid obliteration by Fox, we now have the nightly theater of watching dependable news vessels like CBS's Bob Schieffer or CNN's Paula Zahn changing before our eyes. Five weeks ago I caught Paula in big hoop earrings and swingy new red-state hair interviewing her own mother. How will CNN's lead yeoman Wolf Blitzer handle the new personality requirements? Watch for his first stand-up in a Don Imus hat.

Despite all the evidence they present to our eyes, network news bosses still feel the need to pretend they are committed to the integrity of information. The new president of CNN, Jonathan Klein, has had a great ride with a purity shtick. He keeps giving interviews to Charlie Rose and others about how he's purging CNN of "shout fests" like "Crossfire" and replacing them with "great storytelling," but his first big move was to replace the boringly useful Headline News updates with the snorting victims-avenger babe Nancy Grace. It's working, too. Grace, whose expressive nostrils I am warming to myself, has goosed ratings by 126 percent.

It's time for the media elite -- that new cussword -- to stop moaning about this irreversible trend. It lost the fight because it wasn't elite enough. Elites are supposed to lead, but mainstream media and the conglomerates that own it are the most docile followers of all. Like the Democrats in Congress, we are a craven crowd. We go panting after the 25-to-54 demographic and the networks panic if a show devoted to foreign affairs or the world of ideas pulls down the ratings for a lousy hour or two.<snip>

Perhaps in the near future what used to be thought of as news will be not only produced but exclusively consumed by an ever-shrinking elite who feel vaguely guilty about being well-informed. Information junkies prospect on the Web for what they want to know. Everyone else will just be transfixed by the passing reality show that comes disguised as news. The only trouble is when something really big is happening out there, we are blindsided by its impact -- as when the rise of Islamic fundamentalism somehow passed us by in the '90s. Ignorance suddenly got awkward on 9/11.

The news cycle has evolved into a pattern that strobes between overkill and silence, but reality has not ceased to exist. As our eyes are exclusively focused on a hospice in Florida or an apartment in Atlanta, you wonder uneasily: What's going on beyond that wall of noise? The earthquake off Indonesia this week was like the sudden recriminating cry of the tsunami victims who lost our interest: "Remember me. I'm still here."