I don’t think anyone would disagree with the argument that there’s simply not enough time in a national newscast to tell all of the important stories journalists want to tell. And the “half hour” network newscast is actually closer to 20 minutes once you take out the commercials.
Why, then, would NBC Nightly News devote about one-fifth of an entire broadcast to a profile of actor Ben Affleck? That’s what they did on September 30, in an extraordinarily long piece (for network TV) that didn’t even pretend to be pegged to any particular news.
What do NBC viewers learn in the four-minute segment? Well, the famously proud Bostonian loves Boston sports teams and dislikes New York sports teams. Anchor Brian Williams tells us of Affleck: “The kid came roaring out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a restless mind.” He and his wife “have three beautiful children,” but the “Afflecks are stalked each day of their lives by paparazzi.”
And we learn that the actor appreciated the news outlet’s assistance with promoting his new film: “The star of Gone Girl then noticed we’d gone to great lengths to put the title in our great big screen.”
And, finally, Williams explains that Affleck “says what makes him feel best these days is philanthropy.” That’s good to know.
With all this attention being lavished on a multimillionaire who’s promoting a new film–there doesn’t seem to be any other reason* to talk to him–we couldn’t help but think back to the most recent FAIR study of how the network newscasts cover poor people in this country. As we noted (Extra!, 6/14) , over a 14-month period the networks mentioned poverty just a handful of times; NBC did eight segments over that time period. For all the networks, poverty coverage amounted to about 2.7 seconds per newscast.
It’s a safe bet, then, that this one report will add up to at least half of the airtime the network will devote to poor people over the course of the entire year. It’s something to remember the next time you hear a big-name journalist complain about the lack of airtime available to covering stories that actually matter. Someone makes the decision to call this “news.”
* Usually in cases like this, where a news outlet pays an inordinate amount of attention to someone promoting an entertainment project, the news outlet and the entertainment project share a common owner. But that does not seem to be the case here; Affleck’s Gone Girl is a 20th Century Fox picture, and his next big movie, Batman v Superman, is being made by Warner Bros.
Maybe there’s so little “good news” these days that NBC made a stretch -a cheap in-studio interview to boot- with this piece.
I was going to comment about interlocking directorates and common ownership as well.
That said, perhaps someone either at 20th Century or Warner’s asked an NBC hotshot for a “favor.” Hey in the corporate “brotherhood” of the multi-billion dollar advertising-media empires, what’s not to grant?
Watch NBC start nabbing a handful of those multi-million dollar publicity ads.
Be well.
Who cares?
They could also stop telling me which movies did what box office over the weekend–also a way of promoting business for people already filthy rich
If the networks want to present human interest they should instead try to emulate Studs Terkel.
Yep, he’s a big star who also happens to be an ill-informed egomaniac, witness his over the top I’m right and everybody else is wrong performance of the Bill Maher show.
But the poor doesn’t pay the Reporters bills, and the media moguls are part of the Corporate Lords and Masters clique.
However, this is easy, by having this person come one, they fill their news 20 minutes with something they don’t have to pay a journalist for; Remember the American Corporations and their Lords and Masters are not here to produce a product or provide service. They are here to steal every dime they can, and do nothing, as much as possible. To that end, they give us this garbage because they can easily recycle it with out having to actually do any work.
I think it’s safe to say I can speak for the poor and inform his Royal Exalted One that we want justice not philanthropy – charity and image wash as WalCrap has it. If Affleck really wants to engage in philanthropy, he, like Oprah, ought divest themselves of, in Oprah’s case 95, after all 2 or 3 billion what does it matter, of 90 percent of his wealth and scatter it to the wind.