Why the All Mighty Dollar Controls News Coverage - It's the Ratings Stupid!

The national news media is all about making noise and advertising dollars, not good reporting. Now, where news stations and papers make no effort to hide their political affiliations, the American public does not tune into good reporting, it no longer knows what it is. It is shocking just how little coverage serious national news gets on the major cable news channels. Presidential speeches, congressional hearings, Iraq war death tolls and much more "hard news" has to share important airtime with celebrity and pop-culture news that used to occupy a mere fraction of a broadcast. It was if the world stopped during the Anna-Nicole Smith death, same for the Paris Hilton prison release. Apparently, nothing else happened in the entire world worth reporting when these fiascos were being reported. Never in our history have we had so many people talking - without anything of substance being said.

Hosts/firebrands like Nancy Grace, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity - do you think they really believe the rhetoric they spit out every night? It's hard to say what is real and what is an act with some news personalities. They are under such pressure to continue to generate money for their respective companies. Not to mention that many of them seem to change their tune depending upon which company they work for at the time. Tucker Carlson, once the resident conservative on CNN's Crossfire, lost his trademark bowtie when joined MSNBC. Flashy graphics, controversial hosts, bombastic headlines and "breaking news" ever twenty minutes enforces the belief that it is all about the ratings and making money for the company.

Listening to talk radio is a perfect example of how ratings rule. Some hosts border on the absolute ridiculous, reduced to name calling in order to get listeners to tune in or ever better call. The fact that the majority of talk radio is conservative also proves the fact that being controversial trumps good news. So-called liberal radio just does not have the same "piss-n-vinegar" that conservative radio has. If a host cannot get angry callers to start on-air tirades then the advertisers stay away and the station looks for someone else to fill the timeslot.

There is no fact checking anymore, it is more important to break the news first than break the news correctly. Just look at how the news media handles health and science; the moment a research study comes out it is broadcast as if it were gospel, only to be refuted a few months later. Remember when eggs were bad for you? How about when cranberries caused cancer? Or when tomatoes were supposed to fight cancer? Milk and dairy products were supposed to help you lose weight a year or two ago, how about now? All the while the media handles each new "fact" as if the older news never existed. They cart out Dr. Gupta or some other expert who preaches the value of the new study and we the sheep are supposed to follow along - at least until the next study.

But why is it like this? It is all about the ratings and ratings means advertising and advertising means money. News is a business like everything else in this country and at some point, the media decided it needed to stop reporting the news and start selling the news. Which means the media is no longer interested in reporting stories in any kind of depth, since that would take up too much airtime. Think back, when was the last time you saw an on-air debate that was not ended by "well we have run out of time"? The number of sound bytes a station can fit between the important commercials into a news day seems to be one of the deciding factors. Like a misunderstood teenager, the new media believes that any attention is good attention, since it brings in viewers. The case involving Don Imus loosing his job is testament to just how much power the advertisers have over what news Americans get. Controversy leads to listeners, but when the controversy threatens revenue (i.e. advertising dollars), the news media companies have no choice but to listen to their overlords.