Just another day in TV `news'

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

Another television "news" show.

Just what we need. This one is called "Now" and airs Wednesday nights. First there was "60 Minutes" Now there are 60 clones.

What's the purpose of all this purported news?

The premiere of "Now" featured an interview with Bette Midler and a report on the case against the Idaho white supremacist, Randy Weaver. No points here for originality - or depth.

Americans should be the most well-informed, intelligent people on Earth, considering the amount of news we ingest every day. Early morning news, morning news, news on the five, or on the nine; news at noon, pre-evening news, post evening news, 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock news, Nightline and late night news. Plus all the news shows and pseudo news shows that air in between.

But what do we actually learn from this glut of information? What do we take away that's important, that makes us better citizens, better human beings? What does listening to Bette Midler, to all the Bette Midlers who prattle on about their movie-star lives, actually add to our lives?

It seems that fiction moves us more than real life. More people have cried in the last year over "The Bridges of Madison County" than over the deaths of 1,400 children in Bosnia. More people have sobbed at the reenacted evacuation of Saigon now playing at the Wang Center than ever shed tears watching real people beg to be evacuated on the nightly news.

The news, for all its daily hours of witnessing, dilutes and distances reality. Its images are too quick, its stories too short and its commentaries too predictable to be felt. Fiction - in the form of movies and dramatic re-enactments - takes the time to bring a viewer into other people's lives. Sympathy then becomes empathy, and the viewer is changed.

But this seldom happens with news stories. There are a few exceptions. One of the news magazine shows did a piece more than a year ago on the plight of Romanian orphans. The show got viewers passionately involved in helping these children.

But for the most part, television news shows are little better than Cliff Notes. They have the information, but they lack emotion.

It takes time to make viewers feel. And news shows are reluctant to devote the time to any one story, when they could do three or four stories in the same space. And so they deal in shock, or they go for the close-ups, or repeat sensational quotes, or use somber voice-overs.

But as quickly as viewer outrage or interest peaks, it dissipates. It's felt and then forgotten. Even the most dramatic story squeezed into a few minutes, then interrupted by a commercial break, immediately followed by some inane segment about weight gain or hair care, loses its impact. The viewer isn't given the time to invest any emotion in the story.

News shows could, if they wanted to, change the world. They didn't let up on the flood in the Midwest. America saw the rising waters and the intrepid victims every time they turned on TV. And people all over the country responded.

Imagine how many lives could have been saved if it hadn't taken more than a year for the world to see Irma, the gravely wounded 5-year-old flown from Sarajevo to England last week. There have been 13,000 Irma's so far, once strong, healthy children now blinded or paralyzed or scarred for life because of a war that the world has ignored. Some 1,400 children have been killed in this war. But it took one little girl to make nations pause and finally see the consequences of looking the other way.

Now there is an outpouring of concern, because people do care. But they need to be allowed to feel with their hearts, not just see with their eyes before they react to what's going on. The footage of Irma on television accompanied by the brief history of her life, roused dorment consciences all over the world. People saw and felt and reached out to help.

If TV news pointed its cameras at all the people and places that need help, help would come.

But television news has slipped over into entertainment. Where are the documentaries about Haiti's long struggle for democracy? What happened to the Chinese immigrants on the Golden Venture? Why are there so few stories about America's changing cities?

Television news' love affair with the stars and with the trendy stories distracts from the news. We watch and we think we are well-informed, but we are not. We are simply entertained