Even Inside MSNBC They Recognize Cable News Is Awful

You know it’s bad in cable news when someone at MSNBC says cable news is no longer news. A woman named Ariana Pekary, who worked as a producer on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” quit her job recently because she just couldn’t do it anymore. That she managed to stay any length of time working for a prima donna like Larry is a testament to her intestinal fortitude, but even a true believer has their limits. What has happened to cable news in the era of the Trump presidency was even too much for her.

I’ve been sounding this alarm for a few years now and even wrote a best-selling book about it. If you watch a “cable news debate” on any subject, there is a better-than-average chance that you’ll come away dumber. Which network doesn’t really matter. The level of knowledge of the guests is about the same: they’ve read a story about the topic and have an opinion.

You’d think I was joking, and I wish I was, but I’m not. Haven’t you noticed how the same people weigh in on everything? North Korea? Check. Health policy? Check. Taxes? Yep. Education? Same. The pandemic? There they are.

Did cable news just luck into finding the smartest people ever to exist? As someone who knows many of the faces you watch, whatever network you watch, I assure you the answer is no.

They’re not dumb, but they’re also not special. Their skill, as it were, is to be able to string together a semi-coherent sentence, always with hours to prepare and often with the help of producers, on any subject. When a segment is five minutes long and there are three or more people involved, how much does anyone have to know anyway? You could do it, I promise you.

No, knowledge of a subject is not a requirement at all. In many cases, to be honest, it’s an obstacle. It seems crazy (mostly because it is), but having worked with a lot of policy “wonks” I can tell you they’re not the easiest people to have a conversation with, even about the subject they know more than almost anyone on. Most wonks get so deep in the weeds of their issues, and their work lives are spent with people who do the same, that they don’t realize not everyone has a working knowledge of the intricacies of reinsurance, for example (don’t ask). Having them on TV to explain something complex in simple terms would be like asking a feral cat to explain thermodynamics.

They need a buffer to be understood. That used to be the host or reporter, but now it’s no one. So the people who study these issues for a living are out, and in come the contributors.

A lot of cable news contributors are like actors – they know they don’t have the knowledge, so they have to bring the bombast. They’ll tell you they don’t play a role, but most of them do play a role. Otherwise, their whole real lives would be spent yelling at everyone. The way Ariana put it is that the model “forces” producers “to make bad decisions on a daily basis.”

She continued, “The model blocks diversity of thought and content because the networks have incentive to amplify fringe voices and events, at the expense of others … all because it pumps up the ratings.”

I know this to be true. I’ve been personally told so by people in position to make those decisions. These networks aren’t concerned with conveying information--they check their ratings literally by the minute. What and who “rates well” dictate what is on the next day, not what’s actually newsworthy. That’s the opposite of what you’d expect from an organization with the word “news” right there in their name, but it’s true.

If you were given just a list of guests on almost any cable news show for any given day, you’d have to wonder if it’s a rerun – it’s the same people, no matter what the topics are. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. They’re private businesses and free to do whatever they want. The problem comes in with the use of the word “news.” It’s not.

I get that they’re paying these people obscene amounts of money to talk for a couple of minutes per day, so they might as well use them. Just don’t call it news, because it’s not.

“Occasionally, the producers will choose to do a topic or story without regard for how they think it will rate, but that is the exception, not the rule,” Ariana wrote, and she’s right. That’s not going to change anytime soon. The same void in the market that originally gave birth to MSNBC and eventually to Fox exists again today. I hope someone, even one of them, gets back in the news business and fills it. Because accurate, honest news is desperately needed.

These networks aren’t concerned with conveying information--they check their ratings literally by the minute. What and who “rates well” dictate what is on the next day, not what’s actually newsworthy.

I'm not sure about that. Outfits like CNN have terrible ratings. They don't seem to care. They aren't trying to appeal to the masses. They push propaganda that appeals only to a small fringe of the Left and this results in low numbers of viewers. But they seem OK with this.

The author of this piece seems to think this all started with cable - and that the news organizations just happened into it in the race to build ratings - but he's wrong:

The media - print, broadcast, and cable have always had a leftward bias and pushed that bias since almost a century. The industry began to gather like-minded people and coordinated with Democrats and attacked Republicans since roughly the Great Depression.

At first, they were more or less clever and concealed opinion in the slant of their editorials - but not seeing enough effect, they grew bolder in driving US policies and opinion and began to openly praise one side and vilify the other.

Do any of you really think that FDR was perfection on Earth and all of his opponents idiots? How about JFK and LBJ nearly triggering thermonuclear war at least twice and initiating a long-term, unsustainable war 10,000 miles away? They had a virtual "love-in" with the media until the left decided to support the enemy and turn on LBJ. Anyone think Nixon was really any different than preceding Presidents that he needed to be thrown out? Or that Carter, Clinton, and Obama were wonderfully scandal-free?

The only thing that's changed is the obviousness of the bias and the viciousness in the open for all to see.

Very well said.

I put it this way. The left is very good at lying to themselves.

We have been ruled by a Mediacracy for at least 50 years.

Alternate media got enough of a voice to result in the Republican revolution of 1994.

That got the Mediacracy's attention, and they became much more openly partisan. They also lost audience.

In effect, they were trading stored up credibility to win short-term victories.

But they had no way to replenish credibility, which, once lost cannot easily be regained.

President Trump's election is the result of using most of that credibility.

Now, they are reduced to shouting lies at the minority of people who only get their information from them.

I’ve stopped watching cable news for the most part. I asked my wife why don’t they interview me? I’m just as smart, if not smarter, then most of the people on cable news holding various opinions. And, I could give a much more coherent answer to the questions in 30 seconds.

It isn’t that I’m brillant. Rather one has to wonder where they come up with these “experts”. It’s rather frightening that these people are in control.

It's not really a left/right thing, though. His point is that because of the fragmentation of the media into so many different outlets, and the relatively recent ability to track electronically ratings by the minute, "news" has an incentive to appeal to a niche.

If you look at the numbers, cable news gets viewers in the seven digits at best -- sometimes only six. No more does 30% of the country watch a given network. So rather than trying to win a broad swathe -- which is impossible because most people don't watch news at all -- they try to maximize their niche.

FoxNews was so successful for so long because they were the only cable news channel that even arguably leaned conservative...where 40% or so of the country is. Meanwhile, the rest of broadcast and cable news was fighting over whatever percentage of the leftward part of the country watches the news. So guys like O'Donnell say fringey things because that's a market segement they can win.

The only saving grace now is that so many people don't watch the news at all as a regular habit.

Its even worse than that.
Somewhere, I think it was in 1980, the Media discovered they could manipulate elections by manipulating voters.
They tried to convince America that nominating Reagan was going to cause WW3.

They were determined to keep Reagan out to the point that Reagan felt he needed Bush on as VP to “unify” the GOP.
One of the few mistakes The Great One ever made.

It makes you wonder if it was the media (working with John Connally and Texas GOP) was how this “unify” story all started.

Talking again about the 1980 election....
I was looking at John Anderson, a House “Republican” from Ill who eventually ran as a 3rd Party.
The media really promoted this guy until polling said he was pulling more people from Carter than from Reagan.

When you follow his career, he moves farther and farther left to the point where he was an early supporter of what became Social Justice.

don’t buy the argument that all they care about is ratings. Let’s look at the reality. MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and increasingly PBS are all on the Left. The ratings for each are lousy because 6 of them are vying for the audience of just half of the political spectrum.

Meanwhile Fox (OANN is still an infant that isn’t on regular cable offerings) has a monopoly on the other half of the political spectrum by default. Fox gets pretty good ratings.

Gosh....if an actual adult were put in charge of one of the other networks and this is what the landscape looks like, and his mission were to actually boost ratings, what would he do? (que Jeopardy music).

Yet none of them do it. This has been the story for years and years and years.

Obviously ratings are not what is motivating them.

-——Their skill, as it were, is to be able to string together a semi-coherent sentence——

The President is showing everyday that no particular skill is required. Even he can do the news.

Yesterday he did the news for two hours, all by himself

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