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CHECK: AbusedbytheNews.com

brought to you by Daniel Price, a writer and media critic living in Los Angeles.

His debut novel, Slick, a comedic tale of PR and media manipulation, was just released in hardcover by Random House/Villard. In November, he'll begin teaching a crash course in disinformation at the Los Angeles Center for Inquiry.

Why does the news on TV make me want to gouge my eyes out and then set my head on fire?
Although they won't admit it, it's pretty obvious that the news networks have abandoned their mission to inform us. Now all they're trying to do is get our attention and hold it there long enough to show us the advertisements.
How did it get this way?These outlets are all run by megamedia überconglomerates who require greater and greater earnings in order to keep their shareholders happy. And since there's more competition than ever for our limited attention spans, they believe that the only way to get us to notice them is to make their newscasts louder, dumber, sexier and scarier. Same goes for their news anchors.

Yes, but it seems like they're giving us bad information more and more. What's the deal?
In order to reduce operating expenses, the media giants are subjecting their news divisions to repeated rounds of layoffs and spending cuts, while simultaneously increasing their news output. So what you have are fewer people gathering more news and given less time to do it.
Not only does that lead to more mistakes and omissions, it also creates an increased reliance on unverified information from dubious sources, such as publicists and spin doctors.
That's also why we're seeing a sharp rise in the number of pundits, analysts and other nattering nabobs in our news. Because real journalism is expensive. Talk is cheap.

And what about the bias? You gotta talk about the bias.
Partisan bias is one of the few things I won't complain about, because the problem is ridiculously overblown. Anyone who currently works in a news studio can tell you that their top two priorites are making deadline and not getting fired. Even if they do give a crap about subverting your political ideology, most news professionals don't have the time, the skill or the incentive to insert subliminal skews into their broadcasts.
That's not to say bias doesn't exist in our news. But instead of searching left and right, take a good hard look at the bottom line. The real slant in our news is a slant towards profit. And that means a slant towards shock, shlock, scandal, drama, fluffy little kittens, and whatever else the focus groups respond to.

But in a free market system where TV is measured by ratings, aren't the networks just giving the people what they want?
Yes, but the system is hardly democratic. For starters, there are only 5,000 Nielsen boxes gauging the viewing habits of the entire United States. Secondly, advertisers pay the networks more to attract certain segments of the population (such as affluent women aged 18-49), so most newscasts are tailored to appeal to key demographics. Unfortunately, the networks have chosen to fight over the same few eyeballs, which is why we're consistently hit with the same crap from every channel.
And finally, the vast majority of news programs are losing viewers by the truckful, so obviously we're not getting what we want.

Isn't it our own responsibility to stay informed on the things that matter?
Absolutely. And there are still plenty of good places for us to go for news. The problem is that we can't walk two feet in this country without stepping in some bad journalism. We're continually bombarded with misinformation, disinformation, and non-information from every side. And it's making us all a little nutty.
"Funny" nutty or "scary" nutty?A little of both. We're living in a culture that's becoming increasingly jaded, apathetic, fearful and polarized. And I think our current news climate has a lot to do with that.

Do you think the mainstream news will get better or worse over the next few years?
As the networks get increasingly desperate and cynical about the viewing public, I think their news coverage is going to keep sliding down toward 'worse.'
But then everything comes in cycles. Just as CNN filled a much-needed void in 1981, someone else may eventually come along with a brand new network that relies on actual investigative journalism, one that doesn't treat its audience like congential idiots with the attention span of mosquitos. And if it does well in the ratings, then expect the other networks to follow suit. They're very good at following.

Where can one such as I learn more about the inner workings of the mainstream news media?
I've prepared a big fat list of books that do a wonderful job shedding light on the business of news, plus the study of disinformation. And of course you're free to keep checking back here at Abused by the News. Needless to say, this is a subject that interests me.