As the John Mark Karr debacle shows, TV news loves stories that keep viewers passive and fears the ones that might motivate us to take action.
Media Beast vs. Public Interest
By Mark Cohen

…Make no mistake: The media beast is every bit as compulsive and out of control as [John Mark] Karr, who may yet end up behind bars for child pornography. But the beast is free to maul again and again.

For 10 days, TV news has fixated on this imposter-culprit as if he were a world-historical figure — like Nelson Mandela emerging from prison, only bigger. TV tracked Karr’s travels across the globe, telling us what he ate for dinner, analyzing his attire.

To extend Karr’s allotted 15 minutes of fame into a 10-day ordeal, TV news ignored important stories of war, environmental degradation, corruption, citizen activism. Instead, TV viewers were offered hundreds of hours of single-minded examination and debate on one burning question: Did Karr do it? The inquiry was relentless and aired all sides.

If only we’d had such in-depth, full-spectrum debate when the Bush team was dragging our country into war based on pretense.

I worked in cable news just prior to the Iraq war. As I describe in my book Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, journalists at MSNBC got into trouble with management for questioning Team Bush too strongly, for insisting on genuine debate.

By contrast, no one will get into trouble for this embarrassing 10-day spasm of overwrought Karr coverage … as long as ratings were good and coverage was cheap. If so, news producers can expect congratulations for a job well done.

Tabloid stories involving sex, crime or celebrity are preferred by TV news management today. These stories are inexpensive to cover, since speculation by alleged experts can fill fill up hours of airtime. And tabloid stories typically don’t offend anyone in political or economic power, including corporate sponsors and media owners.

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