Until recently, American voters have headed into every weekend—when many of them finally have the time to research and contemplate issues facing our nation—only to confront what former Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minnow referred to as the “vast wasteland” of television.
63 years ago this month—in May 1961—Minnow suggested in a speech that Americans parking themselves in front of TV sets “…will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials - many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom.”
While not referring specifically to news broadcasts, Minnow today would surely agree that what laughingly passes as “journalism” in America makes his vast wasteland of programming look like a symposium of rare art on display in the Louvre. Especially on weekends, when anchors, producers, and editors should be arrested for loitering rather than drawing paychecks.
Weekend “news” in America consists mostly of substandard local broadcasts focusing on various shootings, stabbings, college sports, and charity “fun-run events.” On the networks, broadcasts feature agenda-driven programs with shamefully biased hosts like MSNBC’s Jen Psaki........