Page 213 - A Handbook Genre Studies in Mass Media

CHAPTER 8

lost money; however, the news was considered to be a public service.
Ted Koppel, former anchor of Nightline, explains:

This, however, was in the days before deregulation, when the Federal
Communications Commission was still perceived to have teeth, and its
mandate that broadcasters operate in “the public interest, convenience and
necessity” was enough to give each licensee pause.
Network owners nurtured their news divisions, encouraged them to
tackle serious issues, cultivated them as shields to be brandished before
Congressional committees whenever questions were raised about the
quality of entertainment programs and the vast sums earned by those
programs. News divisions occasionally came under political pressures
but rarely commercial ones. The expectation was that they would search
out issues of importance, sift out the trivial and then tell the public what
it needed to know. 6

However, by the 1970s, news divisions were expected to break even.
Thus, in an effort to attract a larger audience, news directors began hiring
young, attractive reporters and included sensational stories in their broad-
casts. This trend has continued, to the degree that today news programs
are considered major sources of profit for television stations. According
to Koppel, this profit imperative has compromised the quality of news
programs, including the coverage of international issues:

Washington news, for example, is covered with less and less enthusiasm
and aggressiveness. The networks’ foreign bureaus have, for some years
now, been seen as too expensive to merit survival. Judged on the frequency
with which their reports get airtime, they can no longer be deemed cost-
effective. Most have either been closed or reduced in size to the point of
irrelevance.
Simply stated, no audience is perceived to be clamoring for foreign
news, the exceptions being wars in their early months that involve Ameri-
can troops, acts of terrorism and, for a couple of weeks or so, natural
disasters of truly epic proportions.
You will still see foreign stories on the evening news broadcasts, but
examine them carefully. They are either reported by one of a half-dozen
or so remaining foreign correspondents who now cover the world for
each network, or the anchor simply narrates a piece of videotape shot by
some other news agency. For big events, an anchor might parachute in
for a couple of days of high drama coverage. But the age of the foreign
correspondent, who knew a country or region intimately, is long over. 7

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