The Buzz Blog

 
As you make your way to the Fleet Center, you pass the little trailer villages put together by big television stations as working sites for support personnel and production equipment.  There is usually a little banner outside each one, indicating the individual network, kind of an ad hoc address marker.  Inside the Fleet Center, there are more big media office rooms in a backstage press area.  On top of that, the biggest networks have their custom-made broadcast booths circling the arena.

For the three national networks, that's a lot of money invested for three hours of coverage this week.  Yet, the "big three" networks skipped Barack Obama's dazzling keynote speech last night.  Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and the other aged, well-fed, multi-millionaire news readers claim that there's no news happening at the convention, so why bother to air a speech that might put a positive face on the Democratic Party and offer a vision for the future of the American people.  Why let them know more about the choices they are facing in November?

Really, now.  Granted, the speeches are part of a planned presentation, given that Kerry has been the party's nominee for months now.  But aren't all of Bush's speeches planned presentations, put together for media effect?  Even his so-called press conferences are scripted, with a list of which pet reporters to call on.  Aren't these the same three national networks that derive their White House news coverage pretty much from press releases and photo-ops put out by Karl Rove's operation?

I mean, it's a little audacious to call the "big three" networks news operations.  They have a ton of stenographers -- uh, we mean reporters -- but couldn't find real political  news if it him them in the face.  And what is a nightly news cast on the national networks but a series of brief stories strung together like a disposable edition of USA Today headlines? Call it "thong" news coverage. Very skimpy and very brief.  I mean, what does Tom Brokaw do besides read "news" scripts vetted to ensure that they don't upset the White House too much -- or the corporation that owns his butt, General Electric?

You'd think that with more than 5,000 delegates and alternates representing one of two of America's major parties gathered in one city, the "big three" networks might be able to do a four-night series on issues facing America -- and what the Democratic Party perspective is on them.  It might be time to inform Americans about what the nation is facing, and how one of the two parties is planning to deal with our country's future.  They might be able to focus on how the national issues impact individual delegates and intersperse these segments with the major speakers each evening.  But no, that would require working to obtain a story and to inform the public.  That might be too controversial and require some of their staff to actually break a sweat to get REAL news stories that involve critical issues relating to our nation's future.

No, no, no, that's not "news."  That's creating an informed public, which is exactly what television "news" does not want to do.  They want to surf the news cycles with trivial, sensationalistic, and catty news stories and commmentary.  They want to keep viewers attached to the tube to boost their advertising dollars by providing "infotainment," not news or insights into our nation's public policy challenges.  Michael Jackson is news.  Kobe Bryant is news. Laci Peterson is news.  Bill Clinton's little fellatio episode was news.

But the future of America?  That's not news.  That's just BORING!

Long ago, television news stopped being about news and started being about engrossing the viewers through flimsy speculative opinion about the character of public officials, rather than about their policies.  I mean, why are the big three networks here at all? What's the point.  They could just have a pool camera and stay home.  They don't plan on developing any stories that might actually deviate from the media "conventional wisdom" that is doled out to them through RNC and White House message points.  So what's the point of pretending to "cover" the convention?

There are supposed to be something like three media-related people in Boston for each delegate.  Many of them are print reporters -- and a few, very few, Internet sites like BuzzFlash (including a handful of bloggers). We found some of the print people and television news researchers in a room reserved for filing stories.  It's supposed to be a place a reporter, like BuzzFlash, can go to send stories over the Internet or to use to call information into the "home office."  But if you don't get there first thing, all the seats and phone lines are taken for the rest of the day by media people who appear to be covering the convention by watching the television monitors placed in the room.  Duh, couldn't they do this from their living room?

Actually, this is not an unusual occurence.  At large events of any sort, where there is limited room access, reporters are housed in tents and watch the actual political event on television screens. So the images and words on television become the basis for stories that you read.  It kind of seems like news masturbation, except most of it isn't even news, it's infotainment or, in the case of the White House, "govertainment," as BuzzFlash has come to call it.