Broadcast Journalism Ben Steers 5/5/11 Media Studies Broadcast News and Network provided us with an allegorical, yet

satirical, representation of the corruptness of the news industry. It is set up so that the media and its counterparts are personified through characters in the story and their actions represent the relationship between the media and its parts. Broadcast News represents the relationship between the media-Jane, soft news-Tom, and hard news-Aaron, and the struggle for Jane to keep Tom and Aaron. Network shows how television and its need for audience, represented by Diana, is loveless and extorts people for their own benefit. During sex, which is the most intimate thing a person could do, she talks about work. The only love she has is for herself and for her work. When Max tries to leave, Diana shows no signs of love and doesnt really care. She just says get out, but when he talks about arctic desolation, then she starts to care. TV is selfish and only cares about itself and Diana shows us that. The morals and standards of the news are slowly falling and so are those of the people who watch them. Tom, the devil, was used to show the dropping of standards in the film, Broadcast News. He will look attractive and be nice and helpful and will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. Aaron. Edward R. Murrow set these standards of news that carried through, but what good are they if you are not really reporting news? News has just become a fight for ratings; a fight for money. The news industry has stopped reporting news, now they have to sell it and if that means creating a television show about terrorist attacks, then God-damnit theyll do it. Is this how low we have stooped? If they are writing a show about terrorists, it doesnt seem like they have any motives to stop terrorism. Sidney Lumet suggests that media promotes terrorism, and while that is a little extreme, it is true. The media loves a good story so they arent complaining about the outburst of murders or the chain of burglaries. What if all crime and violence stopped? What would

the news report now? It seems like it would be boring and they couldnt have that. The media needs these scandalous and violent stories, and Sidney Lumet knew that. Although we, the people, are lowering the standards of media, the opposite is occurring simultaneously. Media lowers the standards and morals of humans. Media is an amusement park as Howard Beale says. Television is not the truth... If you want truth then go to your God... Well tell you anything you want to hear. We lie like hell!... We deal in illusion man! None of its true!... Youre beginning to believe the illusion were spinning here. You are beginning to think the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. This is what happened in The Machine Stops by E.M. Forester. People started living by the machine. They worshiped the instruction manual as their Bible. The machine became their God, their source of truth, and that is what Howard Beale was warning his audience about. We start to believe all of the things the TV says and it becomes this great manipulative device. We see war or murder or violence on TV every day, so we start to think that it happens all the time and that it is just part of culture. It numbs our senses to these issues so that they dont become a big deal to us. War, murder, death are all the same to you as a bottle of beer.-Max Schumacher. Our morals are getting stuffed down because we allow them to. We ask for this stuff, we feed on lies, until it becomes a staple in our diet. Wayward husband comes to his senses returns to his wife with whom he has built a long and sustaining love. Heartless young woman left alone in her arctic desolation. Music up with a swell. Final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next weeks show. Max, who represents the good, hard news, is the only thing keeping the media from falling into arctic desolation. Max realizes that even though there are more viewers with Diana, it is less real, he is reporting to robots. He decides to go back to his old wife who represents good content and standards. When Maxs wife flips out on him, she was yelling at him for lowering his standards to be with Diana. The same happened with Jane. Jane realized that Tom actually was lowering standards. Jane believed in the standard of reporting the news, initially performed by Edward R. Murrow when he went to the story. He would show the story, not write the story. He would let the pictures speak for themselves, instead of telling people what they should see, and that is what Jane was all about. She didnt want to tell the soldier to put on his shoes; she just wanted it to

happen. Without hard news in the media then the news becomes just another television show. It becomes no more news then the Burns and Allen show. By adding soft news, we take away from the hard news. Just as demonstrated in Broadcast News, as Jane, the media, got closer to Tom, Aaron was pushed away. You cant have both, (though I think polygamy is legal in Afghanistan or somewhere). Hard news and soft news are opposites and although the media needs them to work together, one will eventually be pushed away, and it probably will be the one that brings in less revenue. When Howard Beale is killed at the end of Network, it represents how Diana and Hackett (the need for profit) killed the media. They extorted him to their will and disposed of him like a used tissue. This didnt bother them because they were so desensitized and dehumanized to care. The personification of the media also lent itself to show the demoralization of people due to the media. We are free falling in a downward spiral. The more we are desensitized by the media, the more we ask for similar content; and it pulls us down as if it were the adverse of capillary action until our poor, apathetic humanoid bodies, filled with nothing but lifeless disdain, cannot sense any emotion and thus, we cease to be human.

Work Cited

Forster, E. M. The Machine Stops. [United States]: Dodo, 1909. Print.