Broadcast News

Going home to Philadelphia while living on Los Angeles time frequently makes me the last person awake in the house. So it was last night that I was puttering around at midnight when I came upon the film Broadcast News. I hadn't seen it in a while, certainly not since I began blogging and began paying attention to politics with a vengeance. It occurred to me that virtually every problem about the media revealed in that film is still at issue today. And it was released in 1987.

The fictional network news station depicted has an aloof, richer-than-God anchor who is little more than a newsreader; a Washington bureau which has the spectre of staff cuts hanging over its head continually; dwindling resources for foreign bureau reporting; and difficulty coming to terms with the new reality of the news division having to be a profit center rather than a public trust. These problems didn't begin with the election of George W. Bush. The corporate takeover of television stations has been a long time coming, and with the proliferation of cable news only in its infancy (it had only been around 8 years or so at the time of the film, and CNN was recognized for its depth of coverage... remember that?), the pressure on the media to produce dollars rather than good journalism has only gotten worse.

The film is essentially a standard love triangle, but the central story as relates to the decline of the media concerns William Hurt's character, Tom Grunick, a flaky and none-too-bright former sports anchor who is brought to the network level mainly because of his good looks. Albert Brooks plays a dedicated reporter named Aaron Altman, who writes scintillating copy and is dogged in the field but doesn't connect with the public in the same way. There's a pivotal moment when Grunick is tutoring Altman on his performance for an upcoming shot at anchoring the weekend news. "When it comes down to it, you're a salesman. You're selling yourself as credible. So when you feel yourself just reading, stop. And start selling." This is where we find ourselves today. We have people providing the information that the public needs to make informed decisions who are despicably lazy about what they're saying, but unbelievably precise about HOW THEY WANT YOU TO FEEL about what they're saying.

Altman sees right through this kind of reporter:

What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen.

The ethical line is crossed in the film when Grunick, during a report on date rape (a sexy, sensationalistic subject for the evening's broadcast), manufactures tears to use in his cutaway during a woman's description of her assault. It's a one-camera shoot, and eventually Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) discovers what he has done. When confronted, Grunick is glib and actually doesn't see how he preyed upon the emotions of the viewers. "I figured since I almost did it the first time, what's the big deal." When told he crossed the line, he says "But they keep moving it, don't they?"

What's bold is that the film eschews the happy ending and shows the reality for what it is. Tom Grunick moves up through the ranks and is made network anchor within a few years. The principled Aaron Altman moves to a local job in Portland. And the standards lower just a bit more.

Our media today, at least in the pundit class and on television, is controlled by intellectually lazy storytellers who weave narratives which they try desperately to sell to the public. Their instinct is self-preservation, so the storytelling aspect is highlighted because they believe that will keep people's interest and make politics accessible, and therefore allow them to keep their jobs. In fact these narratives rely on false assumptions that are never updated, and are characterized by personality-driven reporting where the most telegenic, the most willing to yell the loudest or exploit the basest emotions, win.

There was no chance this would ever reverse course. The rise of the Internet and technology that allowed the closed system of media to be expanded to more and more people, harnessing the creativity and talent of the entire nation to create an alternative to the dross which broadcast news and its focus on flash has become, at least provided something new. We can keep the media more honest and more responsive, and citizens have somewhere else to go for the most crucial information, an entirely new class of editors whose understanding of the Fourth Estate has nothing to do with overseas bureau costs and how the source's hair looks. Watching Broadcast News, it struck me how this has been an increasing problem for at least a generation, and not an ideological one. It's a problem with how news itself is valued, and how those who provide it are constrained by both their corporate boards and their own failure of the imagination. Reforming the media is essentially a fool's errand, because the gatekeepers have no reason to believe anything needs reform. There are obvious exceptions, of course, but in the main, media-for-profit responds solely to the rise and fall of that profit, and all you have to do is refer back to the early warning signs of this on celluloid (Network, Broadcast News) to see the evidence. So yes, demand apologies, and write petitions, and call for idiots like Glenn Beck to be fired, but the public at large knows intuitively that the discourse has been watered down, and they've already cast about to find the alternatives, and most important, the punditocracy and chattering classes and bobbleheads on cable news have a staggeringly low amount of influence. We give them a lot of agency because we're news junkies, but movies like Broadcast News wouldn't have been made 20 years ago if they didn't connect at some level to a public with a pretty low opinion for what journalism has become.

I know that with the Democrats in the majority, there will be a target on Nancy Pelosi's back, and the Heathers inside the Beltway will gossip and hiss and do whatever they can to push their familiar narratives. But less and less people are buying that fairy tale. They get that it's a tale told by an idiot.