A couple mornings ago we were doing the usual morning-get-ready stuff. Hubby likes to turn on one of the local stations for weather and news. Since my tolerance for broadcast news is incredibly low (and since my tolerance for most local news outlets is roughly equal to my tolerance for fingernails on a chalkboard), I'll find something else to do while he watches the morning news program.
It's your typical program: male anchor, female anchor, weather guy who tries to be funny, and a little bit of an effort to be informative but mostly a lot of fluff. And a lot of happy-talk. Anyone who has ever known how I am in the morning knows that I do not do happy talk. There was a reason I watched Don Imus for so many years; he was the only person on in the morning whose demeanor was as gruff and cranky as mine is in the morning. (It's also why I wish they could find a way to bring Hughes Rudd back from the dead.)
Anyway, the content of this morning news program is your typical casserole of what passes for television news these days, and that's anything of any real substance either being mishandled or just given a two-sentence summary in the studio, in between the co-anchors trying to be your funniest, bestest friend ever. What gets the longer play are the touchy-feely stories, or the "news you can use" stories, usually your consumer-oriented stuff. But, once in a while, you'll spot something fishy about these stories. I did the other day. One video piece presented under the guise of "news" was so blatantly, obviously a VNR that I saw red. And it was full of half-truths. And yet this station was presenting it just like it was the Gospel.
Now, the temptation was very strong to do more than just yell at the television. I had serious thoughts of getting in touch with the station and saying, "Look, I saw this, and I know what you did." Because what I teach my students is the exact opposite of this. I teach my kids about VNRs. I spend so much of my career trying to get them to realize they are being manipulated in subtle ways, because everybody -- be it politicians, be it corporations, be it celebrities, be it whatever -- is trying to persuade you, and it ain't your best interest they have in mind.
But as I was honing my ire into a fine spear's tip, I remembered something. The station that aired this VNR is one of the very TV stations we're wanting to build an alliance with at work. And for that to work, it's very important I do nothing to offend them. We need them a lot more than they need us. Yeah, I could fire off an e-mail full of indignation, but not only would it accomplish precisely nothing, it would also probably cost my students internship opportunities and our department a valuable partnership. They hold the cards. I don't. Yes, stuff like this turns my stomach. I know what the true ethicist would do. But their station represents opportunities for our kids.
And, besides, if I complained about it, it would accomplish nothing. The ethicists in our trade (and I'm one) can rail about the use of VNRs, but it's widespread; much as we despise them, they're not going away. I know full well I could complain about that VNR and even if I got a "yeah, you caught us" from the news department, be it in two weeks or two months I'd see the same damn thing happen again. It's because VNRs offer an easy and tempting fix to the age-old problem of "we need content, we need it cheap, and we need it now." It's the very problem the creators of VNRs know about when they create them, just as the creators of press releases rely on newspaper editors needing material to fill out a page. It's widespread. To use the old analogy, complaining about it is like complaining about speeding at the Indy 500. It's just the nature of the beast, especially during a time when media outlets have an insatiable desire for content and yet don't want to spend what it would require to get true high-quality content (and during a time when, for most people, content goes in one ear and out the other anyway).
Oh, well. At the very least, I've come away with another example I can use in the classroom. The older I get, the more I believe that the present-day state of our profession is hopelessly lost. However, I can make a difference for the next generation, and that's why I work so hard to train them properly and train them well, for someday when they are calling the shots, there's hope for them making the right call.
(And, one day, if I do strike oil in the back yard or win the lottery or whatever, I'm starting my own television station. It's going to hire the best journalists it can -- nobody can work for our news department unless they've had at least two years working a beat at a newspaper -- and it's going to seek out real news and present it each morning, evening and night with absolutely no crap, no fluff, no snappy theme music, no "we're pretending to be your best friend" sloganeering. It's going to be what broadcast news should be. It's going to be great. And it's going to crater in the ratings and drive me to bankruptcy in less than three months, I'll bet.)