Wayne Besen

Rome Is Burning – And It’s On TV!

It’s dawn in the largest city of the most powerful nation in earth’s history. I pick up the remote control and surf through an endless array of digital cable channels looking for real news, and it is simply nowhere to be found. Sadly, America ’s news stations have given up hard news about distant lands for fluff that is hardly news about fantasyland. Or is it Michael Jackson’s Neverland? Am I the only person mourning the evaporation of real TV news in the morning?

I used to watch CNN Headline News and in thirty minutes I was updated on the day’s incipient events. Today, the morning show is nearly devoid of substance and has devolved into the Cackling Nonsense Network. The consequential decisions of world leaders have taken a back seat to what or who Britney Spears does in the backseat. Headlines have been replaced with punch lines and serious business has been supplanted by lightweight banter. By the end of a half hour show, the chances are you have laughed more than you have learned.

This is okay if you want to start your day with Comedy Central. But there is something dangerously amiss in a culture where the most powerful medium offers almost nothing serious and nearly everything silly. Escapism is meant to be a break from realism, not a replacement. Yet, cable “news” networks like CNN and MSNBC look more like Entertainment Tonight than World News Tonight.

Having worked in the television and radio news business, I know there is an ongoing effort to dumb down the product to attract the highest numbers of viewers and increase profit margins. Highly paid consultants are retained to teach serious newscasters to act seriously stupid. Sophisticated men and women are encouraged to come off as down home simpletons, even if their home is a snazzy New York loft or a sleek Georgetown colonial.

In a subconscious way, our news culture is unwittingly emulating President Bush. While Bush grew up a rich, patrician Ivy Leaguer, he has somehow managed to convince people that he is a tire changing, Waffle House eating, plaid shirt wearing regular guy. News anchors are working to capture the same image and be seen as guys and gals that one would want to be friends with and share a drink.

Are Americans really so lonely and friendless that they need to elect a president or choose an anchor based on an imaginary friendship and a beer?

When the television news industry finally covers a genuine story, they still often miss the real news. For example, Douglas Sovereign Smith Jr., anti-gay moralist and chairman of the Boy Scouts of America’s Youth Protection Task Force, was busted for distributing child pornography on the Internet. This was news because of the stomach-turning hypocrisy.

However, the larger story is that he was caught in “Operation Predator”, a program run by the Department of Homeland Security “to protect children from pornographers, child prostitution rings, Internet predators, alien smugglers, human traffickers and other criminals.”

Thank God that Smith was exposed and children will now be protected. But why isn’t the news media alarmed that the Department of Homeland Security was used to investigate cases that have nothing to do with protecting America from Osama bin Laden’s next big strike?

Until every nuclear and chemical power plant is safe from attack; until we have enough Arabic interpreters to decipher threatening Internet chatter; until our ports and railroads are secure; and until Osama is a cellmate of Saddam’s, it is scandalous that Homeland Security is surfing porn sites or chasing down Democratic legislators in Texas at the request of Republicans.

The television news culture has become ancient Rome . The whole point is to attract photogenic freaks into our personal, HDTV Coliseums to sate our cynical viewing amusement. When Osama strikes and New York is burning or Washington is radiated from the dirty bomb because Homeland Security is monitoring dirty web sites, TV executives still won’t get it. The clueless media will throw up their hands and ask, ‘What happened?’ And the pretty faced news “botoxracy” will deadpan interviews with “unqualified experts”, quite possibly on the administration’s payroll, who will tell Americans that there is no way that Homeland Security could have known such an attack was coming. Oh, and by the way, the Department needs more resources.

The hazy sun rises over Manhattan , but the cable networks have shed no light on the day’s news. It’s ironic that as I click through countless stations in the “information age”, I can’t get any useful information. Oh wait, I take that back. The snickering CNN anchor is updating me on Britney Spears latest escapade.

Wayne Besen is a columnist and author of the book "Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth."