On NBC and in other public forums, General McCaffrey has consistently advocated wartime policies and spending priorities that are in line with his corporate interests. But those interests are not described to NBC’s viewers. He is held out as a dispassionate expert, not someone who helps companies win contracts related to the wars he discusses on television.
Yes, and I am "held out" as a "serious news guy", not someone who scrawls intemperate jeremiads at random intervals on a one-in-a-billion blog. Just ask me, I'll tell ya.
Of course McCaffrey is not the first -- nor even the hundredth, nor even the best -- example of how cable networks, their ceaseless and repetitive news cycles, and their blurring of entertainment and analysis have transformed the nature of our consumable news product. They're virtually indistinguishable now, and "reality" teevee has only accelerated that process.
The problem is exacerbated by this ridiculous "consultant" industry, where card-carrying animals such as Dick Morris or Karl Rove, unemployable by any respectable entity, are invited to pimp their debauched opinions as if they were something worthwhile. McCaffrey's apparent conflicts of interest are certainly part of the problem, but the timing here is more than a little weird, as if this rotating roster of infohacks and consultards making the rounds wasn't an issue in the first place.
There is not a huge leap from how the consultant industry operates and how these guys work, which is symptomatic of how all the boundaries have been swept aside.
What Katie Couric is not giving us, as a mainstream evening-news anchor, is an invitation to participate. So what if we changed the format of her show? Every day she gives us a sneak preview of whom she will interview over the next week. And you can go online and post your own questions. Maybe two or three user questions end up on the evening news, and you’re like a big star if she uses your question. She says your name: “This is Robert Rasmussen’s question.” You’re totally psyched. You feel awesome. And then on the Internet we post the other 17 user questions and their answers. We put those on the Internet, so there’s actually like an hour of content. A half-hour is on TV, and the other half-hour is on the Internet. You start involving people in the conversation. You start using television as the theatrical component to the Internet. Because what TV offers that the Internet doesn’t offer is a guarantee of fame. You know that millions of people saw that bit of you on television.
Oh, a-men to that, bro-ham. Hell, why not turn it into a raffle or a contest, something exciting like that, while we're at it? Dude, I can't just watch this "news" thing, unless it's about me, or asks me my opinion, or something awesome like that. I want David Brooks to offer fashion tips, which should be at least as useful as his political insights. I want a newscaster who gives me a personalized shout-out, maybe a pole-dance, and removes an article of clothing after every story segment. Not so fast, Brokaw!
Guys like McCaffrey are pikers, really, old farts riding the only revenue model available to them. It's just business; no doubt the political aspect hardly occurred to them. Networks sell one thing, ad space, and doubters are welcome to shit or git. The commercials are there to convince you that you're dying of restless leg syndrome and can only be cured by the wonders of modern pharmacopia, but it's the space between the commercials where the real bidness is done, where the players talk to each other whilst the audience beats off to the fantasy of ever more obscenely large vehicles to drive to the supermarket. Conflict of interest? The whole goddamned notion of corporate news is an endless, inextricable series of them.
The idea that, say, Jeff Immelt is suddenly going to step in and change a revenue model that works very well as is, because of some supposed ethical compromise, is about as likely as him showing up on the set of 30 Rock because of their occasional gentle lampooning of NBC's hierarchical system. It's not a bug, it's a feature. There's no baroque conspiracy; none is necessary when people don't get into the room unless they're on the same page in the first place.
Ya gotta hand it to the ad weasels -- they really have the pulse on where this new "news" product model is going. It's a brave new world of fractal marketeers angling for that digital niche, a strip-mall paradise of salesmen and the narcissists they seek, each looking for that next iteration of American Idol to get in on from their respective ends. Should be fun.
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