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Irrespective of the political ideology of the individual cable TV news channels, Stewart explained to Maddow that the reason he lumped them all into the same category was their approach to the politics beat. So the defiantly non-partisan CNN came under fire from Stewart for its political coverage just as much as FNC or MSNBC. The 24-hour Conflictinator he called it.

Stewart had two complaints. First, the reflex instinct of the cable news channels is to shoehorn every development, every dispute into a political template: "We have all bought into the idea that the conflict is red-vs-blue. It is not the right fight." Stewart pointed out that this politicization preceded the primetime ideologues on FNC and then MSNBC. From its invention, CNN specialized in concentrating on political stories over non-political ones and also framing stories by default as binary left-vs-right disputes. No triangulation there--everything was Crossfire. Writing in Mediaite earlier this year, Spud from Inside Cable News criticized all three networks "for going for the low hanging fruit of the cable news ratings world, the ideological partisans and political junkies. Like talk radio, cable news now looks to feed the political beast out there." In this aspect, these complaints match Koppel's in his Washington Post op-ed: political disputes and political commentary represent the low-cost content that attracts audiences without the expense of real newsgathering.

Second, "proportionality is not their strong suit." Even the most trivial developments are covered with urgency; even the mildest of opponents are demonized. A medium that was invented to provide minute-by-minute coverage of massive breaking news stories knows no way to handle mundane developments and disputes. Thus, Stewart argued, coverage of the legality of torture degenerates into namecalling about war criminals. Please, he implored cable news partisans, "fight on the most precise and proportional terms possible."

I find both of Stewart's complaints persuasive. Especially on a light news day, especially in primetime, these networks do not deserve to be called news channels; they should be called politics channels instead. A major reason why Tyndall Report continues to monitor the broadcast networks' nightly newscasts is that, unlike on cable, they continue to try to cover all beats, political and non-political; public policy and elections; domestic and foreign; breaking news and features; human interest and societal institutions.

Andrew Tyndall 11/19/10 7:31:24 pm

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