Have you seen some of the stuff happening with real people on TV lately? Talk about confrontation, conflict and agression. And that was just Bill Clinton answering Chris Wallace's questions on Fox News the other day.
In this day and age of reality TV, nothing is more real than news and newsmakers, even though some of them are pretty fake. Let me explain. I'm the first to admit I'm a huge fan of the CBS hit Survivor. I've been hooked on that show since its first season. I find it to be fantastic drama each week with odd twists and turns. But let's face it: so-called reality shows are fake by definition. Remember MTV's The Real World? I say remember, because that show went way off the tracks long ago. I stopped watching some time around the fourth season when the people on the show were given jobs and tasks to carry out. The concept of putting seven strangers in a posh Manhattan loft or California beach house without requiring them to pay rent automatically creates the air of fiction. But those early years were pretty cool, because there was real conflict at times between the housemates without MTV plying them with alcohol in the hopes someone would do something naughty in a hot tub or shower. And thus reality television has devolved to lower and lower depths over time. But we expected that.
So move over reality shows, and enter cable news. OK, so perhaps the deterioration of civility on cable and even cable news is nothing new. But it's reached some new lows lately.
Let's start by going back a couple weeks to a now infamous incident on a show hosted by the inaptly named Nancy Grace. You may remember the story of her doing a live phone interview with a mother who's toddler had gone missing and disGrace berating the woman and basically accusing her of offing the kid. The next day, Mom killed herself. Now, good ol' Nancy may have been right that the woman was responsible for her son's disappearance. But who attacks the parent of a missing child on live, national TV. What was even classier was the fact that Grace has continued to defend her stance and blame the woman's suicide on a guilty conscience. If it were only that simple, Nancy!
Also making great TV was former President Clinton's appearance on Fox News Channel. In the interview, Mr. Clinton snaps when interviewer Chris Wallace (admittedly a fraction of the interviewer of his famous father, 60 Minutes bulldog Mike Wallace) asked him about attempts by the Clinton administration to find and kill Osama bin-Laden. "You did Fox's bidding," Clinton said, calling Wallace's interview performance a nice little conservative hit job." It had undertones of his wife's famed interview during his presidency where she talked about "a vast, right-wing conspiracy" against her husband. "You've got that little smirk on your face," Clinton went on to tell Wallace, "and you think you're so clever."
Well, Mr. President, what's clever is how Fox News Channel somehow convinced the beacon of American liberal ideology and the Democratic Party to boost the arch-conservative network's profile. For someone regarded as being so brilliant (yes, he was a Rhodes Scholar) how did he fall right into their hands? Did he really think Fox was disappointed by the hours of free pub it has received that has surely boosted its conservative viewership? At the very least, the incident may have given some people a new low moment to remember about our 42nd president that doesn't have to do with a cigar or a blue dress.
Now before anyone starts to think I'm a fan of FNC, lemme tell you right now that I'm not. My personal political views aside, I consider myself a journalist, and I think what FNC does on a daily basis hurts my profession and its collective reputation immeasurably. Fair and balanced? Well, I'll reserve comment on that.
Finally, speaking of FNC and other News Corp.-owned subsidiaries, anyone catch Keith Olbermann's rant about Rupert Murdoch and the New York Post Wednesday night on MSNBC? In case you missed it, earlier this week, Olbermann received a threatening letter complete with white powder. According to the Countdown host, the Post's account of Olbermann panicking and demanding to be checked out at a hospital were not only inaccurate, but were perhaps criminally negligent. The Post was one of the view media outlets to report on the incident, because the FBI had asked MSNBC and NBC not to publicize it in order to help in its investigation. Other outlets apparently agreed to comply with the request, just as most had done when Fox requested a few weeks back that fellow newsies limit their reporting of a kidnapped FNC correspondent and his photographer so the kidnappers would not know they had actually named a high-profile target. But Olbermann said the Post, which reported neither he nor the network commented on the white powder incident, never called to get a comment, which would've let them know about the FBI's request for quiet.
Ah, squabbling, conflict, back-biting, in-fighting, name-calling and finger-pointing. Yes, they all make for fantastic television. And whether it's reality shows, cartoons, sports, politics and yes, even news, they're all available for you at the touch of a button 24 hours
a day.
