People (who in our eyes have blue hair and play bridge) like to talk about the great Walter Cronkite and his denouncement of the Vietnam War. These people like to tell us about the men who walked on the moon, the Iranian hostages, and the Berlin wall falling down. They remember Barbara Walters interviewing heads of state, the excitement of a special televised broadcast from the White House, the thrill of a hockey victory in 1980, and the agony of their favorite candidates losing their battles for the presidency or announcing that they did not plan to seek reelection. These people lived these things and more. They lived them and they saw them, and they did that in large part because of televised news. It is often said that the Kennedy/Nixon debate was proclaimed a victory for Nixon by those people who heard it on the radio (that thing that plays music out of the dashboard of your car), but was placed as a check mark in the Kennedy corner for those people who watched it on television. And that says enough. TV changed news. What I'm sure people like Cronkite and Pat Weaver didn't anticipate though was news itself would change, and the word "great" would be used only sparingly, and in past tense, to describe something that had existed only long ago.
Ted Turner might have been a visionary. In 1980, right in the midst of hostages, Olympic boycotts, an election, and the growing popularity of the microwave oven; an all day, everyday, channel dedicated exclusively to all things world wide news was a forward thinking concept. Years before Al Gore would invent the Internet, a 24/7 televised news channel was the best way to stay up to date with information as it unfolded throughout the day. CNN started out by showing viewers footage of global crises, asked citizens about their opinions, and told us about the things that seemed to really matter. These guys stationed themselves in Flordia after the Challenger disaster and donned night vision goggles to take us into Desert Storm. Whatever the news of the day, they were there, and because of them, we were all there too.
The channel is still with us, but the news has changed. So then the question is raised, has the news changed to reflect the demand of society? or has society changed as a result of the so-called news that it's given? This could be tougher than the one about the chicken or the egg. I remember watching "The Today Show" as a kid and learning about the struggles and triumphs impacting citizens across the world. About the war in Bosnia and the Million Man March in Washington D.C. I had an informed opinion about Bill Clinton at age 9, and was given the opportunity to read an essay that I had written on gun control on air at CNN at age 10. Then the other day, at age 24, I was watching the same news magazine program that has been in existence since 1952, and I continued to learn. This time, in "Today"s world, instead of hearing about the realities of Obama's surge into Afghanistan or the bombing in the Middle East, I was introduced to a couple who attempted to crash a White House dinner, a dinner that I can only assume was also attended by influential and above all, invited, guests. And rather than simply giving me the names of the party crashers, I was also provided with an in-depth analysis into whether or not there was a White House insider secretly pulling for their admittance into the event. I have heard this story before, and I'm pretty sure this White House insider was staying at a hotel located at 2650 Virginia Avenue. I also now know that John Edwards did in fact father a baby named Quinn while his wife is fighting cancer, and I know that one of Obama's economic advisors is engaged to a new girlfriend despite the fact that he just fathered a baby with an old girlfriend. I can't remember his name, and I don't know what he does, but I do know that he insists that the relationship started after he had broken up with baby mama # 2 (he already has children from a previous marriage), and that's what I got from the story.
As far as recent events go, I can't help but to think of the balloon boy (maybe it's because of my bright yellow T-shirt that reads, "Go Falcon, Go") when I think of the evolution of news over the last 10, 20, and 50 years. Even after Balloon Hoax 2009 was exposed to its most inner core, every news outlet in America was still willing to give the crooks, who would eventually be tried in federal court, the full fifteen minutes that they had been seeking. When the balloon came down, with no kid inside, and the whole thing began to unravel, the media didn't shun these lowlives, they wanted them more. It didn't matter that the parents had wasted the time of the National Guard or that the story wasn't true, it was news. It was the news we wanted. It was when I saw the boy literally throw up on "Good Morning America" and then upchuck again on "The Today Show," and then heard a guy discuss both instances of puke through the box in my car that usually only plays music, that I began to think about how this kind of thing could have happened.
The story initially reminded me of Jessica McClure, tiny "Baby Jessica," who fell into a well in her Midland, Texas yard on an October day in 1987. Notwithstanding the obvious questions, "were these people Amish? Who the hell used a well in 1987?", this event helped CNN land itself as a household name as it televised the unfolding drama without any interruption. All news, all the time, that's CNN. Therefore, the 2009 balloon incident seemingly stayed pretty true to CNN's initial purpose. A kid was in danger, and CNN was going to keep us with them until that kid was saved (or until he was scraped off of a freeway somewhere between Colorado and Nebraska). It wasn't until I thought about the differences between the two incidences that I realized that the discrepencies between them sum up the change not only in news but in our society as well. In 2009, a family wanted a balloon to lift it to a life of fame and fortune by taking us all for a ride, and the media was right there, just as eager to use the story for its own self-promotion. While in 1987... a family just wanted to get its kid out of a well.
