New York Times columnist Frank Rich gave a lecture titled "On Art, Culture, and Politics" in the chapel on Saturday, October 1. Prior to his current position writing for the Times's opinion page, Rich has written for the New York Times Magazine and the New York Post, as well as for the New York Times as a drama critic from 1980-1994.
After an introduction by Associate Professor of English Catherine Kodat, Rich began his talk with a reference to a summer 2004 magazine article in which a White House aide stated that the administration continuously shapes its own version of reality to offer the American public. Rich explained that government institutions can and do form reality for citizens. He credited this practice to the general state of American culture, saying that as a country America seems to "go to sleep" and periodically awaken to confront new political developments. This behavior amounts to a peculiar cycle in which Americans wake from a stupor to face previously avoidable problems or even disasters, such as the recent Hurricane Katrina calamity.
Rich cited the current state of American news coverage to point out a merging of news with television, show business, and politics into what he called a "24/7 national soap opera," by which Americans have unprecedented access to information but a weak grip on reality. According to Rich, it has become a challenge to discern where information ends and entertainment begins as the fiction or propaganda of cable television is now inseparable from the nonfiction of journalism.
Rich drew attention to the beginnings of this TV development in the 1970s, citing the hugely successful ABC miniseries "Roots" as the first instance of mixing soap opera fiction and historical fact. With other networks duplicating the formula, such as NBC with "Holocaust," a barrier had been breached: it was now possible to treat serious subject matter in a soap opera fashion. Rich then addressed CNN's coverage of the First Gulf War as the emergence of 24/7 live news that worked in this manner. With its own logo and theme music, the war had become a miniseries of its own—a TV drama in which many willing Americans at war gave their opinions, and journalists' reports seemingly legitimized this new form of coverage. With ratings consistently high, the success of this new method transformed the way networks reported the news, and inspired networks to treat any story in this way.
Rich cited as later manifestations of this developing process the O.J. Simpson trial, which people watched even when little actually occurred in the courtroom, and the death of JFK Jr., in which the reality of the situation was apparent but the networks neglected to report actual information, opting to speculate and stretch out the story with fabricated scenarios to keep viewers' rapt attention. The coverage of Princess Diana's death was equally lengthy: networks repeated the story countless times, examining it from every possible angle and drawing it out ad nauseam.
According to Rich, by the mid-1990s every TV news organization had become thoroughly connected with show business, citing as examples Disney's buying ABC and Universal Studios grabbing NBC. Not only did big corporations determine what Americans watched, but more subtly, news divisions that once stood alone had been absorbed by giant companies. Rich said that two worlds which had no business merging—those of news and entertainment—had become fully synthesized. With the rise of two new cable news networks, MSNBC and Fox News, as well as the ascent of the internet as a news source, a cutthroat competition emerged, with an early battleground being the Clinton White House scandal. Accurate and responsible journalism had given way to sheer, inescapable sensationalism, which soon became applied to all sorts of stories.
The effects of this change in coverage grew most pervasive with the beginning of the war in Iraq, Rich said. The Bush administration manipulated this new American culture, one of fascination with televised spectacle, and introduced stories such as an Iraqi connection to Al-Qaeda and possession of nuclear weapons to capture America's attention. Cable news networks sensationalized these issues and coverage of the war, including the "Shock and Awe Campaign" in which Americans had little concept of what was actually taking place on the ground—news footage showed "action but no consequences," said Rich. The administration and networks omitted images of death and damage, which conflicted with the grand spectacle they wished to portray, an example of the showbiz element in news giving a selective view of reality. The disingenuous declaration of "Mission Accomplished" capped off what seemed less like war and more like a Hollywood film that depicted awesome and decisive victory. From Rich's perspective, this distortion has become the business of televised news reporting.
Rich concluded by saying that this culture of sensationalism has grown too powerful to be reversed, but suggested that Americans can "vote with their pocketbooks": they can choose not to watch such coverage and instead search for accurate journalism elsewhere, refusing to abide by the dishonest portrayal of reality that has dominated cable news for some time.
The lecture was followed by a brief question and answer session.
This talk was sponsored by the Doris M. and Ralph E. Hansmann Lecture Series, which was established in 1993.
-- by Greg Gencarello '06
After an introduction by Associate Professor of English Catherine Kodat, Rich began his talk with a reference to a summer 2004 magazine article in which a White House aide stated that the administration continuously shapes its own version of reality to offer the American public. Rich explained that government institutions can and do form reality for citizens. He credited this practice to the general state of American culture, saying that as a country America seems to "go to sleep" and periodically awaken to confront new political developments. This behavior amounts to a peculiar cycle in which Americans wake from a stupor to face previously avoidable problems or even disasters, such as the recent Hurricane Katrina calamity.
Rich cited the current state of American news coverage to point out a merging of news with television, show business, and politics into what he called a "24/7 national soap opera," by which Americans have unprecedented access to information but a weak grip on reality. According to Rich, it has become a challenge to discern where information ends and entertainment begins as the fiction or propaganda of cable television is now inseparable from the nonfiction of journalism.
Rich drew attention to the beginnings of this TV development in the 1970s, citing the hugely successful ABC miniseries "Roots" as the first instance of mixing soap opera fiction and historical fact. With other networks duplicating the formula, such as NBC with "Holocaust," a barrier had been breached: it was now possible to treat serious subject matter in a soap opera fashion. Rich then addressed CNN's coverage of the First Gulf War as the emergence of 24/7 live news that worked in this manner. With its own logo and theme music, the war had become a miniseries of its own—a TV drama in which many willing Americans at war gave their opinions, and journalists' reports seemingly legitimized this new form of coverage. With ratings consistently high, the success of this new method transformed the way networks reported the news, and inspired networks to treat any story in this way.
Rich cited as later manifestations of this developing process the O.J. Simpson trial, which people watched even when little actually occurred in the courtroom, and the death of JFK Jr., in which the reality of the situation was apparent but the networks neglected to report actual information, opting to speculate and stretch out the story with fabricated scenarios to keep viewers' rapt attention. The coverage of Princess Diana's death was equally lengthy: networks repeated the story countless times, examining it from every possible angle and drawing it out ad nauseam.
According to Rich, by the mid-1990s every TV news organization had become thoroughly connected with show business, citing as examples Disney's buying ABC and Universal Studios grabbing NBC. Not only did big corporations determine what Americans watched, but more subtly, news divisions that once stood alone had been absorbed by giant companies. Rich said that two worlds which had no business merging—those of news and entertainment—had become fully synthesized. With the rise of two new cable news networks, MSNBC and Fox News, as well as the ascent of the internet as a news source, a cutthroat competition emerged, with an early battleground being the Clinton White House scandal. Accurate and responsible journalism had given way to sheer, inescapable sensationalism, which soon became applied to all sorts of stories.
The effects of this change in coverage grew most pervasive with the beginning of the war in Iraq, Rich said. The Bush administration manipulated this new American culture, one of fascination with televised spectacle, and introduced stories such as an Iraqi connection to Al-Qaeda and possession of nuclear weapons to capture America's attention. Cable news networks sensationalized these issues and coverage of the war, including the "Shock and Awe Campaign" in which Americans had little concept of what was actually taking place on the ground—news footage showed "action but no consequences," said Rich. The administration and networks omitted images of death and damage, which conflicted with the grand spectacle they wished to portray, an example of the showbiz element in news giving a selective view of reality. The disingenuous declaration of "Mission Accomplished" capped off what seemed less like war and more like a Hollywood film that depicted awesome and decisive victory. From Rich's perspective, this distortion has become the business of televised news reporting.
Rich concluded by saying that this culture of sensationalism has grown too powerful to be reversed, but suggested that Americans can "vote with their pocketbooks": they can choose not to watch such coverage and instead search for accurate journalism elsewhere, refusing to abide by the dishonest portrayal of reality that has dominated cable news for some time.
The lecture was followed by a brief question and answer session.
This talk was sponsored by the Doris M. and Ralph E. Hansmann Lecture Series, which was established in 1993.
-- by Greg Gencarello '06
