Bob Garfield, a Media Expert, Summarized the Laughable BS that Constitutes Cable News at Major Events — Like the Boston Marathon Bombing and Aftermath— His Brief Article Is Worth Reading

19 April 2013

Citation — to Bob Garfield’s caveat about cable news

Bob Garfield, Broken news: how to get through a major cable TV news event, The Guardian (19 April 2013)

Today, I had to laugh when CNN breathlessly focused in on a segment of suspect-chasing, police activity in Watertown

The TV segment that I saw occurred in the aftermath of the death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers. His brother, Dzhokar Tsarnaev, fled police during the apparently hair-raising pursuit that left Tamerlan dead.

Authorities had put Watertown (Massachusetts) under “shelter in place” lockdown and advised all of Boston’s population not to leave their homes. Taxi and public transportation were shut down.

During this period, in conjunction with an observed helicopter flyover and a unconfirmed report of smoke, CNN breathlessly focused in on a small part of Watertown that was being barricaded off with yellow crime scene tape.

But what CNN was showing didn’t accord with the breathless intensity with which their crew reported it. Having been in less exciting versions of large-scale, emergency police operations myself, I could see that the officers depicted had no idea what they were confronting, if anything.

And I also knew from experience that scores of untelevised police and federal agents in other parts of the city were simultaneously doing equally important (or unimportant) things.

My military wife summed the obvious confusion of the scene up, when she said, “Why don’t those idiots have cover?”

She was referring to three popgun-wielding street cops standing completely unprotected on a one-story roof top, peering intently at the multi-windowed, much taller quasi-apartment building just across the alley from them.

In officer safety contrast, just a few meters from this (not necessarily) witless trio, was an armored SWAT vehicle with an armor-wearing SWAT officer intelligently concealed behind the vehicle’s steel door.

The conjunction of the SWAT vehicle with the unprotected street cops merely reflected the chaos of large police operations in fast moving situations. Information is unreliable, orders are conflicted or absent, and most “badges” follow their instincts. It’s the police equivalent of the fog of war.

Something substantive might have been going on behind CNN and MSNBC’s delay-televised scenes — or not.

So, I chuckled a few minutes later, when I read media expert Bob Garfield’s caution against taking cable news coverage of such events too seriously.

Bob Garfield’s caveats about cable news

In apparently big events:

A watched pot never boils.

The latest developments usually aren't.

Get your brain a screen saver.

If you knew what went on in the kitchen, you might not eat at the restaurant.

Bad news does not necessarily have larger significance.

Of these observations, the two most important are

Regarding false impressions of accuracy:

The cable channels have a handful of anchors and a handful of reporters. They may look authoritative, but they don't constitute anything remotely like a robust news-gathering machine.

The channels do employ a whole mess of producers, but their principal job is to book experts and pundits, who may have credentials and make-up, but are basically just guessing.

Regarding societal importance:

[N]either the amount of airtime nor even the body count are reliable measures of intrinsic importance.

[I]f it bleeds it leads.

The corollary is: Citizens United – the supreme court ruling that fundamentally altered the scale and transparency of US political campaign funding – didn't get a logo.

Citizens United screwed down the plutocratically installed U.S. coffin lid, although you wouldn’t know the democracy crushing, historical magnitude of this decision based on most of what you see every day on television or read online.

My personal experience adds a caveat

Even if the police tell the media exactly what is going on, the media will (almost invariably) get the facts wrong and distort the take-away message.

The moral? — American news delivery is, for the most part, an entertainment industry

If you want reliable facts and rational analysis, you will ordinarily have to look elsewhere.

PeteFree.com

Bob Garfield, a Media Expert, Summarized the Laughable BS that Constitutes Cable News at Major Events — Like the Boston Marathon Bombing and Aftermath— His Brief Article Is Worth Reading