CBS: Breaking News
by Osita Nwanevu
Is broadcast news worth saving? The networks are often discussed as though they’re the last bastions of seriousness on television—in comparison, at least, with the punditry that now dominates cable news. Between all the dreck, however, the cable channels still do as much or more reporting than their greying predecessors do, and the Sunday political shows aren’t much more probing or interesting than the cable panel shows they inspired, if they ever were. The network evening news shows, for their part, have been declining in quality forever; all three now offer more or less identical and ludicrously truncated 15-20 minute packages of actual news, often padded out with syrupy human interest or celebrity stories. NBC closed out their broadcast a couple of nights ago with a segment about a sixth-grade class that helped a man put together a surprise wedding proposal to their teacher—a minute and a half that might have been spent more fully covering terror and tyranny here and abroad, given over instead to cute infotainment.
Newscast producers know their dwindling audiences well. While real news junkies have an ever-broadening constellation of sources and outlets to obsessively track, many of those watching the evening news do so precisely because their interest in the news is more casual. Having considered the all-you-can-eat buffet, they’ve opted for a light and polite dinner instead. And there’s always room for dessert.
Bari Weiss, needless to say, is the news junkie who’s taken the helm at CBS News knowing little about what non-junkies want. Her approach to journalism is such that that hasn’t stopped her from sounding off about CBS’s audience.
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