You’re not watching real news; you’re watching a scripted show

By David McElroy · September 28, 2011

Most people with at least half a brain realize that “reality TV” is anything but reality. It’s scripted and edited to create the drama and tension producers want — to attract and entertain viewers. But how many people understand the same is true of news?

Newsweek’s Howard Kurtz has a great article this week about how Fox News boss Roger Ailes is making changes at his news channel to tweak its positioning. Although the moves are interesting all by themselves, I was struck by some of the details that emerge in Kurtz’ reporting, because it’s very obvious that the purpose of the producers is to create drama, not to enlighten people.

Because Fox let Kurtz have behind-the-scenes access to meetings between producers preparing for last week’s Fox GOP presidential debate, it’s clear that the network doesn’t mind you knowing this. The unreality of news has become so accepted that it doesn’t cross anybody’s mind to be ashamed of manipulating what should be serious discussion into being a televised melodrama about personalities instead. They might as well be plotting to create chaos between cast members of “Big Brother.” Kurtz reports:

Hours before last week’s presidential debate in Orlando, Ailes’s anchors sat in a cavernous back room, hunched over laptops, and plotted how to trap the candidates. Chris Wallace said he would aim squarely at Rick Perry’s weakness: “How do you feel about being criticized by some of your rivals as being too soft on illegal immigration? Then I go to Rick Santorum: is Perry too soft?”

“That’s going to get some fireworks going,” said managing editor Bill Sammon, grinning.

When showtime arrived, producer Marty Ryan choreographed the action from a crowded trailer outside the convention hall: he called for a two-shot when Wallace invited Mitt Romney to criticize Perry’s immigration stance, so the audience could watch both men’s agitated expressions. But Ryan barked, “Let’s just be on Perry,” as the Texas governor demanded to know whether Santorum had ever been to the Mexican border, capturing the moment. Afterward, Ailes phoned a top lieutenant: “Tell the team we’ve been kicking ass in these debates.”

This isn’t news. This is scripted manipulation of reality to create drama — to create a show to get you to tune it. It leaves you entertained. Maybe angry. Maybe amused. All the networks ultimately care about is that it keeps you watching. It also keeps you terribly ignorant and paying attention to all the wrong things.

I’ve explained before why I don’t watch television and recommend that others don’t, either. This goes to the heart of that issue, but it’s not just the surface-level things that are obvious. It’s the fact that it changes your way of thinking. As you watch the televised shows — and mistake them for serious substance — you think less and less about ideas and more and more about personalities and the hot-button issues that you’re fed. Before you know it, your thinking is so confused that you’re nothing but a mindless consumer of a passive product.

It’s no accident that the guy running Fox News isn’t a journalist. He’s a long-time political consultant. Ailes is someone I have a lot of professional respect for, even though I frequently disagree with him. He’s smart and he understands how to communicate themes. The problem is that he worked for years on communicating simple themes to voters in a dumbed down way — which I’ve done plenty of, too — but how he’s taking the same dumbed-down approach to getting viewers to watch. It’s a great business strategy. It’s great for manipulating people. It’s just a very dangerous way to handle public discourse.

(Just to be clear, this criticism isn’t directed just as Fox. It’s true of all the TV news. Fox is more successful right now simply because Ailes and Co. understand the game very well. The others are doing similar things, just not as effectively. The problem isn’t the people or the approach. The problem is the inherent limitations of the medium itself, which I discussed in my previous article about television.)

If you want to understand the world, turn your television off. I won’t complain if you watch some sports or if you use your television to watch movies on. But don’t get hooked into being a viewer of TV’s regular programming. And whatever you do, please stay away from “TV news,” which is the biggest oxymoron around. You’re being manipulated in order to get you to watch a show. It’s not going to help you think.

Of course, if you’d rather just live a passive consumer existence — and you don’t care that you’re not going to be prepared for the changes coming in our society — go right ahead consuming the garbage being pumped through your TV set by all the channels. Just don’t complain that nobody warned you.

The “reality” you seen on the news isn’t reality. It’s manipulated content to get you to watch. If you’re spending time with that content, it’s ruining your ability to think — and you don’t even realize it.

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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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