The Shame of Television News

 by George Shadroui  

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In one of the low moments in television history, Fox is bringing us an interview with O.J. Simpson, a man who was found not guilty despite overwhelming evidence suggesting that he killed his wife and one of her close friends.

Many years ago, a brilliant film, Network, satirized the state of television news. Permit me to quote from that film at length.

Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems — and woe is us if it ever falls in the hands of the wrong people.  And that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died.  Because this network is now in the hands of CC and A the Communications Corporation of America.  We've got a new Chairman of the Board, a man named Frank Hackett now sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the twentieth floor.  And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome [expletive] propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what [expletive] will be peddled for truth on this tube?

So, listen to me! Television is not the truth!  Television is a [expletive] amusement park, that's what television is! Television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats and story-tellers, singers and dancers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion-tamers and football players.  We're in the boredom-killing business!

If you want truth, go to God, go to your guru, go to yourself because that's the only place you'll ever find any real truth!  But, man, you're never going to get any truth from us.  We'll tell you anything you want to hear.  We lie like hell! We'll tell you Kojack always gets the killer, and nobody ever gets cancer in Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry:  just look at your watch — at the end of the hour, he's going to win.  We'll tell you any [expletive] you want to hear!

We deal in illusion, man!  None of it's true!  But you people sit there — all of you — day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds — we're all you know.  You're beginning to believe this illusion we're spinning here.  You're beginning to think the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal.  You do whatever the tube tells you.  You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you think like the tube.  This is mass madness, you maniacs!  In God's name, you people are the real thing!  We're the illusions!  So turn off this [expletive] set!  Turn it off right now!  Turn it off and leave it off.  Turn it off right now, right in the middle of this very sentence I'm speaking now . . .

So what happens in this remarkably prescient movie? Howard Beale, the television host who utters the words above, starts to get bad ratings. The network first tries spicing up his show with soothsayers, terrorists and murderers who are actually shown commiting crimes on television. They are bought and paid for, and when the ratings don't get better, Beale is killed — on national television — for having low ratings.
 
Thirty years later, this parody has come so close to reality that all America should be ashamed. We are a nation consumed with violence, reality junk television and talk shows so inane as to make one gag. We have news shows that — too often — are a parade of freaks and hucksters. And we have, in truly one of the low moments in television history, Fox bringing us an interview with O.J. Simpson, a man who was found not guilty despite overwhelming evidence suggesting that he killed his wife and one of her close friends.
 
Airing any interview with him is questionable in my mind, but the topic of this interview — how he might have committed such murders — is bad taste taken to the ultimate extreme. Only having him reenact the murders could be worse.
 
And yet the reaction to this despicable programming decision (perhaps exceeded in bad judgment only by a publishing house agreeing to give him millions of dollars to write a book) is almost as bad. First, we have Keith Olberman, the stuffiest leftist on television, pining about Fox's decision when his own network, almost nightly, glorifies violence with constant in-depth reports about violence. In a recent show, which I stumbled across while channel surfing, MSNBC actually showed, on camera, the murder of three people, and replayed the tape of them being shot over and over. I will give Olberman credit for at least admitting that other networks have similarly sinned, but surely we need no lectures from MSNBC about good taste.
 
Then Hannity & Colmes invited Detective Mark Fuhrman on to discuss the Simpson situation. Sadly, neither host repudiated their network's decision to air the interview. But even worse, Alan Colmes attempted to tar Fuhrman with 10-year-old charges of racism rather than dealing with his network's decision to air an interview intentionally hyped to generate an audience that will tune in to watch how Simpson might have killed his victims.
 
I don't know if Furham ever uttered a racial slur and I hope he has grown into a better person if he did, but his passion about the injustice done to Simpson's victims is real and it is sincere. Colmes, who once wrote that Simpson is innocent, tried to make the issue Fuhrman's alleged slurs over a decade ago. It was a cheap shot remarkable for its tawdriness, and it reduced Colmes to being a shill for his network. Even Hannity debased himself, though not nearly as pathetically as Colmes.
 
But this is the depths the Left has reached in this country, when it is a worse sin in their minds to utter a racist word than it is to take the lives of two innocent people. Colmes should be ashamed and Hannity should be ashamed that his network decided to air this interview.
 
For the record, the victims were Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Lest we forget.

Culture: Media, Culture: Sports

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