Why I've Unplugged from DirecTV
Although long in the brewing,
today Gail and I finally pulled the plug on DirecTV altogether. The main reason is that cable news coverage
in general and that of election 2016 in particular has deteriorated to a point that
it has become literally unwatchable. Reporters
and pundits, especially those on NBC, MSNBC and CNN who seemed somewhat
credible in earlier times have now become happy talk apologists for corporate
power and willing shills for Donald Trump, despite their well-rehearsed posturing
as thoughtful, critical journalists.
Their knee jerk maneuver is to hold high the banner of “both sides do it”
false equivalency, giving cover to each and every lie, misdeed and failing of
public figures, encouraging viewers to abandon the idea that underlying truths
might be discovered with a little more searching, attention to evidence and
reasonable conversation. This media
posture has become more obvious, less credible with each passing day. TV talking heads now go miles out of their way to avoid asking the most important, most troubling questions of the political figures they interview. Frankly, we’re done with this ongoing dodge.
While the particulars here
are too numerous to list, three stand out as patterns too often repeated to be
mere glitches in programming. One was
the preference for showing – often for hours on end – the empty podium where
Trumpy was expected to speak rather than telecast even a small segment of
speeches by Bernie Sanders and other candidates running for office. By some estimates the value of free TV
coverage for our now Confidence Man Elect eventually totaled $2 billion – a
lavish gift from networks supposedly licensed to serve the public interest.
Another telltale sign was the
utterly negligible amount of time devoted to substantive issues in the
presidential campaign broadcast by nightly news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC. According to the Tyndall Report, an
organization that has tracked network news coverage for decades, the total for months
from January through October came to 32 minutes total. Even more astonishing, no attention at all was given to what is
clearly the most crucial issue facing the nation and Planet Earth: climate
crash (often politely called “climate change”).
Not ONE minute. Pathetic.
Finally, I’d note the glaring
lack of diversity among the voices and perspectives of those asked to speak
even on the paltry range of issues, rumors and scandals that now fill the screen 24 hours a day. With a little work, the cable channels' election campaign coverage might
have found any number of articulate people from across the broader range of
American opinion – women from different points on the economic spectrum, African
Americans, Muslims, Latinos, millennials, blue collar workers, farmers, leaders
in small business, climate activists, Native Americans, techies, labor union
officials, notable social scientists, etc. Instead what we were invited to hear was very short
list of talkers – the usual suspects, most of them white – comprised of “conservative” blowhards,
Democratic “strategists,” Bush administration retreads, and a stable of amiable
dimwits invited to try to get a word in edgewise over the obnoxious shouting of
Chris Matthews.
While I regret to say it,
particularly annoying to me in recent months has been the once engaging
presence of always chipper, always bubbly, compulsively enthusiastic Rachel
Maddow. Yes, the content of her evening
show is often solid in its history and analysis. But the mood in which she probes the
disasters unfolding these days often seems simply fatuous. “We’ve got a great show tonight!” she
exclaims as the litany of horrors unfolds. Hey, what a fabulous spectacle American public life has become! Golly Gee! It’s also obvious that some topics are
strangely off limits for Maddow’s intelligent probing, for example the syrupy right
wing propaganda dished up each day by of her officemates in the Comcast office
suites. While it may be unfair, it
occurs to me that Rachel and her colleague Chris Hayes are just too nice as
people to seriously confront the ghoulish, destructive forces now looming in
the U.S.A., global economy and biosphere.
Fortunately, there are fine
alternatives: reading books, following serious websites, pulling down video
news clips from the Net, talking with family and friends over dinner. It turns out that local TV news is readily
available to us via our (slow rural) Wi-fi.
And, hell, I’d pretty much given up on watching pro football anyway, acknowledging what I know now about long term health problems that confront NFL
players.
Hence we’ll spend some of the
$90+ a month satellite bill to support
intelligent podcasts -- The Majority Report, Professional Left, Radio Ecoshock, and Best of the Left along with other good programs and causes.
Most of all we’ll be relieved of the agony of trying to pretend that cable and satellite TV offer a serious, reliable source of news and commentary about the world in
which we live.
- Langdon
