PressEthic

After watching Grey's Anatomy, I was too lazy to change the channel and Barbara Walter's nightly special came on. Intrigued because I haven't seen Barbara on the radar in awhile, I unfortunately continued watching "30 Mistakes in 30 Years," a program about Barbara's "bloopers," so to speak. It actually just ended up being 30 things Barbara has learned in her past thirty years of being a broadcast journalist. Most of them were along the lines of 'don't ask about finances, don't ask what people are worth, don't ask about their sexual experiences, don't embarrass them on TV on purpose,' and so on. Some of her comments on the media:

"In real life, asking stranger's about losing their virginity is obnoxious. On tv, no one seems to care."

If her advice about asking people about sex wasn't bad enough, it deteriorated into, "Never turn down dinner with Clint Eastwood..."

This special reminded me of the question Professor Penenberg posed to our class: Are TV anchors real journalists?

One can't argue that Walters certainly paid her journalism duties in her years of work at the Today show, first as a writer and then a reporter at large who came up with her own interviews, did her own research, and edited her stories (according to her bio). However, the "Barbara Walters Specials" are primarily tabloid-esque questions posed to movie stars and celebrities. She was the first female co-anchor of the evening news. And now she does the View. Is this the descent of media today? No longer does Walters do hard news. Now, she says, "My job is to uncover the real person behind that 8×10 glossies..."

The inclusion of Katie Couric as a primetime evening news anchor to jazz up the station's image (not to mention ratings) demonstrates how low tv is willing to go, at the expensive of real journalism. Can Katie Couric be called a journalist? To me, she's the chick on the Today Show who dressed up in a cutsie Halloween costume every year for her segment. There weren't exactly any big news stories broken on the Today Show. It's an entertainment talk show, plain and simple.

But where is the line drawn now between entertainment and news? Are only NBC and CNN-types seen as "hard news" programs? Or does Fox count, although they work under cable's nonexistent FCC guidelines and their shows blatantly pander to entertainment over straight news? Or is there no such thing as 'hard news'? The news flashed after Seinfeld tonight, "Find out what New York bartenders are topping YOUR drink off with. Here's a hint...it's NOT YOUR AVERAGE MIXER." Scaring the viewer into watching is just as bad as panning to them with a bright chipper Couric instead of a dry reliable old guy. Is there any happy medium? A way to make the news interesting without letting 60 Minutes deteriorate into Entertainment Tonight?