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Elayne Rapping has a bleak outlook on the popular media outlets in her essay, “Watching the Eyewitless News.” Her argument stems from the fact that she believes the news to be catering to the desires of the people as opposed to their necessity: “Local news as we know it was invented in 1970, the brainchild of a marketing research whiz hired by the industry to raise ratings by finding out what audiences ‘wanted to see.’ The Jeffersonian notion that public media show cover what citizens ‘need to know’ was not a big consideration.” It is her contention that covering topics of interest to the majority has allowed the media to “conquer the TV world.” “The set, the news lineups, the anchors, the weather maps, the sports features—all developed for a New York City market—quickly became a universal formula…” Rapping argues that after figuring out this “winning formula,” all of the news media followed suit, in order to get maximum ratings, “When you turn on the news, whether at home or in an airport or Holiday Inn in some totally strange locale, you see a predictable, comforting spectacle.” This spectacle as Rapping puts it ignores important happenings and occurrences for drivel. Foolishness fills what may as well be dead air between the “two minutes of a half-hour segment” populated by the national news items. These close to twenty-eight minute segments are filled with “man on-the-street” interviews, the anchors attempting to calm our jittery nerves, human-interest stories and other tactics to calm the population. The “hard news” is merely “sound bites and head shots, packaged and processed by the networks, from news conferences with the handful of movers and shakers considered newsworthy—the President and his key henchmen and adversaries.”
The anchors are another problem Rapping discusses with the reader. The “group of attractive, charming, well-dressed performers” guides the viewers through this journey of useless news stories and pointless banter. According to Rapping, these are simply actors who are no better than those performing in mindless soap operas are, getting the audience through its evening. “They are the neighbors… we wish we had in real life, there to do the right thing on every occasion… They are not trained in journalism. They often cannot pronounce the local names and foreign words they read from teleprompters. But they sure can smile…”
The main questions Rapping’s essay seems to ask, or invoke is “Who needs this stuff? Who wants it?” Her answer, of course is, “Nobody needs it, but enough people want it that I cannot watch what I desire on the news.” Those are not her words, but seems to have the same implication. Her argument is that the local news projects a picturesque view of the world we live in, only minimally spattered with the occasional off-color spot which the news anchors attempt to make the viewers forget by encouraging the viewers to “not bother too much with that stuff” or to watch “Goofy Gil with the weather, or Snappy Sam with the Sports.”
Elayne Rapping’s contempt for the norms of society are absurd. Most people are well aware that the weather and sports portions of their local newscasts are unimportant, just filler material, but continue to watch with zeal because they are enjoyable portions of the program. If people were to just watch the news for actual news content, they would skip it entirely and read the New York Times or some other worthy source of information. The local news programs must include content to entertain a majority of the possible audience, or they will definitely fail. There are many more convenient methods of learning all the new local occurrences than to sit in front of the television. There are many different newspapers printed daily which may be obtained for a minimal amount of money. After many years of the local news programs, people have learned to desire the entertainment value of a news program instead of the stale words covering a page of newsprint. Rapping says this is wrong. In a world where people are working harder than ever, making less money for the amount of work done, is it not acceptable for them to desire to watch something enjoyable while absorbing the current events of the day? The United States began on the ideal that the masses were intelligent enough to decide what would be best. Rapping doubts that the masses have the ability to collectively decide what they feel is best, negating everything that our forefathers gave their lives for.
Rapping’s elitist view of the world, where everything must be intellectual or is only acceptable for the dregs of society is much worse than those who want to watch Goofy Gil or Snappy Sam. As an occasional viewer of televised news, I tend to desire more than is delivered on any normal news program. To achieve an acceptable amount of news coverage, I turn to the newspaper, or a dedicated news channel such as CNN. CNN is dry, uninteresting, but has the most complete coverage of nearly any story that occurs. Instead of arguing that the general population does not meet her standards of being well informed, Rapping ought to let those who desire to enjoy the news program of their choice.