Sea Change
Cable networks turn from the War in the Gulf to the Body in the Bay
For the first time since US forces invaded Iraq a month ago today, the war is no longer the top-drawer item on the cable news networks or their websites. And what has displaced it? Juicy breaking news about Laci Peterson, the pregnant California woman who disappeared around Christmas. Now begins the lemming-run to get the scoop on the murdered mom; Ashleigh Banfield of MSNBC is probably in a catfight with an airline ticketing attendant as we speak.
There's a perfectly reasonable question in all this that no one is asking. Who cares who killed Laci Peterson?
I'm glad you asked, and here's the answer.
Naked pictures of Laci Peterson!
There. Once this post has had time to cycle through Google's search engine, I guarantee you that this one line will draw more page-viewers than Google searches pertaining to all my war items from the past few days combined. No wonder so many journalists have contempt for the public (see item below), and no wonder so much of the public has contempt for journalists.
The segue from war to Laci may be altogether predictable--what other sort of story, besides another stateside terrorist attack, could have displaced Iraq in the networks' firmament of Really Big News?--but it's telling all the same. During the media ramp-up to the Iraq invasion, remember, the news channel drumbeat was really only interrupted by another story once; and that was the return of Elizabeth Smart.
You can say a lot of things about the behavior of the news networks, but you can't say it isn't consistent. From OJ to Susan Smith to Monica to Chandra to the war and Laci Peterson, "the news" is just a struggling species of reality TV now. The stories with legs are the ones that offer up ongoing and easily digested morality plays, preferably bloody ones with colorful villains. Best of all, the news networks are not hampered by the stricture that still afflicts broadcast-TV reality programming: Thou shalt not kill the contestants. The American cable networks are the Brothers Grimm of our age.