{"id":14029,"date":"2020-08-04T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-04T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14029"},"modified":"2020-08-04T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-04T11:00:00","slug":"rating-distort-content-how-the-news-isnt-just-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14029","title":{"rendered":"Ratings Distort Content: How the News Isn’t Just News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Television producer Ariana Pekary left her job<\/a> at MSNBC recently, saying it’s a bad time to leave, but she can no longer stay. Her criticism touches more than this particular network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s possible that I\u2019m more sensitive to the editorial process due to my background in public radio, where no decision I ever witnessed was predicated on how a topic or guest would \u201crate.\u201d The longer I was at MSNBC, the more I saw such choices \u2014 it\u2019s practically baked in to the editorial process \u2013 and those decisions affect news content every day. Likewise, it\u2019s taboo to discuss how the ratings scheme distorts content, or it\u2019s simply taken for granted, because everyone in the commercial broadcast news industry is doing the exact same thing.<\/p>

But behind closed doors, industry leaders will admit the damage that\u2019s being done. \u201cWe are a cancer and there is no cure” . . .<\/p>

I\u2019ve even heard producers deny their role as journalists. A very capable senior producer once said: \u201cOur viewers don\u2019t really consider us the news. They come to us for comfort.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Television producer Ariana Pekary left her job at MSNBC recently, saying it’s a bad time to leave, but she can no longer stay. Her criticism touches more than this particular network. It\u2019s possible that I\u2019m more sensitive to the editorial process due to my background in public radio, where no decision I ever witnessed was … Continue reading Ratings Distort Content: How the News Isn’t Just News<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[1820,2611],"class_list":["post-14029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-press","tag-media-bias","tag-social-media"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}