TELEVISION NEWS
Getting more spinach with our TV candy

Tuesday, January 02, 2007
The Oregonian
Guest Opinion

If you owned a grocery store and noticed your customers were buying 10 times as much candy as they were spinach, what would you stock your shelves with?

Television executives face the same kind of choice as they pursue mass audiences hungry for celebrity-driven news and scandal-laced dramas.

But the difference is that broadcasters have something that grocers don't: a license to broadcast their products over the public airwaves, airwaves that belong to the people.

The recent petition filed by a coalition of Oregon activists to challenge the Federal Communications Commission licenses of Portland TV stations is a responsible way to debate whether broadcasters should put some spinach on the plates of news viewers. All of the stations, by the way, are owned by out-of-state corporations.

As a former TV journalist in the '80s and '90s, I watched broadcasters' commitment to substantive news steadily decline. The pressure to run more salacious news stories seemed to intensify during the O.J. Simpson era, when news executives all over the country saw their nightly news ratings soar. At the same time, the national networks started producing fewer documentaries and slashing coverage of foreign events.

This shift occurred a few years after the FCC dissolved its Fairness Doctrine, a policy that attempted to ensure that coverage of controversial issues by broadcasters was balanced and fair.

News directors figured that if people wanted celebrities, O.J. and car chases, that's what they'd give them. That's why local TV stations in Portland spent more time last August reporting on the suspected killer of JonBenet Ramsey than on local elections.

But here's the rub: There's an appetite for this kind of racy reporting that has been growing for more than a decade. It's spawned an entire genre of Hollywood entertainment news programs as well as tabloid shows such as "Inside Edition."

I was often asked why my former station, KATU, didn't produce more shows like the "The News Hour" on PBS. In fact, I was asked that question so often that I started carrying overnight ratings sheets that showed "The News Hour" with an audience share rating of 2 from the night before, compared to a 23 share for "Wheel of Fortune" and an 18 share for "The Simpsons."

The truth is, if news audiences were hungry for more thoughtful public-policy news, then the TV stations would feed it to them. Indeed, most of the hardworking reporters at TV stations lament the fact that they can't spend more time producing meaningful journalism.

Informing citizens about their government and keeping politicians honest is a noble calling for journalists. But if viewers don't feel the call to be informed, then what are broadcasters to do?

It's an important debate, if for no other reason than that 98 percent of all households have a television. Adults watch about four hours of TV every day. Whether viewers want the government to force more spinach on us is uncertain, but we all spend a lot of time in front of the television.

Eventually, it comes down to the question of whether news viewers should be given what they want -- or what they need.

Mark Hass served three terms as a Democrat representing Raleigh Hills in the Oregon House of Representatives after working as a reporter for KATU from 1984 to 2000.

©2007 The Oregonian