HOW TO DO TV STUDIES 3.0 169

HOW TO DO TV STUDIES 3.0 169

How did this come to pass? When GE purchased NBC in 1986, and tobacco beneficiary Lawrence Tisch bought CBS the follow- ing year, they commenced programs of disinvestment and disem- ployment, with news divisions subjected to similar profit expectations as entertainment sectors. Hundreds were fired from the news service, following a budget cut of millions. NBC elimi- nated 30 percent of its news employees in the five years to 1992. The impact on programming was obvious. Consider ABC’s 20/20 (1978–). This program takes audience interest as the alibi for its trivia, but the reality lies in its drive for a Tayloristic control of input, such that topics are tested in advance with advertisers, rather than being spontaneous reactions to stories of import (Barkin 2003: 89). The celebrity aspects of contemporary newsgathering derive from decisions to program such shows as Inside Edition (1989–) and Entertainment Tonight (1981–) against network news in the late 1980s. By 1990, news shows had responded by doubling their own coverage of star gossip (Calabrese 2005: 271–2). This has not been

a success in attracting audiences; ratings have plummeted during the era of “soft” news (Boyd- Barrett 2005). These innovations are designed to cut production costs, not satisfy viewers.

It should come as no surprise, then, that from September 2001 to December 2002, network- news coverage of the September 11 attacks and their aftermath basically ignored a stream of relevant topics: Zionism, Afghanistan after the invasion, and US foreign policy and business interests in the Middle East (McDonald and Lawrence 2004: 336–7; Traugott and Brader 2003: 183–4, 186–7; Tyndall Report 2003). And that corporate influence pushed hard to distort the US public’s knowledge of the geopolitical situation. Viacom, CNN, Fox, and Comedy Central refused to feature paid billboards and commercials against the invasion of Iraq (Hastings

2003). During the occupation, General Motors – the country’s biggest advertiser at the time – and other major corporations announced that they “would not advertise on a TV program about atrocities in Iraq” (quoted in McCarthy 2004). UN activities in the region, including weapons inspections, were the least- covered rel- evant items on network news (Huff 2003). And when US authori- ties finally admitted in January 2005 that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, only ABC made that a lead story. Fox News barely touched on it, and CBS and NBC relegated

170 TELEVISION STUDIES: THE BASICS it to a minor item – fewer than sixty words on the nightly news

(Whiten 2005). And consider the coverage of civilian casualties in US imperialist conflicts since 2001. Lawrence Eagleburger, a former Secretary of State, who was called in to comment by CNN after the attacks on the US, said: “There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved,” while Republican- Party house intellectual Anne Coulter told a disabled Vietnam veteran: “People like you caused us to lose that war.” She proceeded to propose that the right “physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too” as well as informing Fox News watch- ers and magazine readers that liberals desire “lots of 9/11s” and “Arabs lie” (quoted in Alterman 2003: 3–5). Coulter’s reward for such hyperbolic ignorance was frequent appearances on NBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and HBO, inter alia (Alterman 2003: 5; FAIR 2005).

When US retaliation commenced, desperate Afghans in refugee camps were filmed by the BBC, which then sold the footage on to the US ABC network. But the soundtrack to the two broadcast versions gave them incompatible meanings.

British media presented the camps as consisting of refugees from U.S. bombing who said that fear of the daily bombing attacks had driven them out of the city, whereas U.S. media presented the camps as containing refugees from Taliban oppression and the dangers of civil war.

(Kellner 2003: 125) CNN instructed presenters to mention September 11 each time