ConsiderThisNews has the following headline to a post: “CBS Early Show Prioritizes Jon & Kate Over Don Hewitt’s Death” and comments “This speaks volumes about the state of TV news” along with a YouTube clip.
A few immediate responses come to mind:
1) It’s the Early Show–since when are any of the morning shows the standards by which we judge journalism in America? I have always thought of them as only semi-news.
2) Hewitt’s death was one of three stories teased–that it was the third and not the first or second doesn’t strike me as telling–indeed, one could argue that being last is more prominent than being in the middle (as was the Jon and Kate story).
3) What really strikes me, however, is that even if we assume that Jon and Kate got bigger billing, isn’t that exactly what we should expect? TV news is a business, and there is little doubt that more people in the US are likely to stay tuned to news about the Jon and Kate divorce than they are to here an obituary about the guy who created 60 Minutes. That says more, perhaps, about the viewing public than it does about TV news, per se.
4) Building off point #3: surely we should also see that a focus on TV news as profitable and at least in part entertainment to be a significant part of Hewitt’s legacy. After all, isn’t that part of what 60 Minutes demonstrated before any other such program?
Sphere: Related Content
August 20th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
[...] Steven Taylor has some more detailed thoughts, notably that morning news shows have never been the height of journalism and that TV news as infotainment is something that Hewitt himself ushered in with “60 Minutes.” Quite so. [...]