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CNN’s Persistent Vegetative Coverage

Copyright © 2005, W. David Tarver

My son Aaron and I spent last week, Aaron’s spring break, at a resort in Jamaica. The weather there was great, so we got to spend lots of time outside. Though we were enjoying ourselves immensely, I couldn’t help sneaking back to our hotel room from time to time to catch up on the news from the States. Each time I turned on the TV and checked CNN for news, the news was about Terri Schiavo. In case you have been in a coma for the past few weeks, Schiavo is the Florida woman who was diagnosed to be in a "persistent vegetative state" and was the subject of a battle between her husband and her parents over having her feeding tube removed. During the entire week, I got hardly a snippet of news about anything else. Whether the show was American Morning or People In The News or Crossfire or Inside Politics or Lou Dobbs Tonight or Anderson Cooper 360 or Paula Zahn Now or Larry King Live or News Night With Aaron Brown, the story was Terri Schiavo. At first the saturation coverage was amusing, then it became puzzling, and by the end of the week it was maddening. Even after the poor woman died, the coverage continued on topics like whether or not there would be an autopsy and where she would be buried.

The coverage of the Terri Schiavo story wasn’t particularly deep. Each news host and each correspondent seemed to just repeat the same basic facts over and over again. Same information, different reader. The amount of CNN programming time dedicated to Terri Schiavo was huge. The amount of new and useful information was quite small. After a few days, I became ashamed that I was even watching CNN. At one point Aaron came into the room and saw me watching the incessant Terri Schiavo coverage. I tried but failed to switch the channel before he came in, but I was caught. Aaron looked at the TV and then looked at me, and asked simply, "Why do you keep watching that?"

The Terri Schiavo story continued to dominate CNN coverage until Pope John Paul II died. As soon as the Pope died, CNN dropped the Schiavo story and went to non-stop coverage of the Pope. The change was just as abrupt as a few weeks earlier, when the "Atlanta Courthouse Murders" story was dropped in favor of the Schiavo story.

I don’t object to CNN airing stories such as these – they are obviously newsworthy. What I object to is the all-or-nothing nature of the CNN coverage. During these past few weeks, I heard little or nothing on CNN about other ongoing big stories: the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the war in Iraq, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the Korean nuclear threat, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the tension between China and Taiwan. I also heard no coverage concerning education reform, energy policy, our growing budget and trade deficits, our health care system, poverty or racism. You get the idea – coverage of "the story of the week" on CNN seems to crowd out everything else, and "everything else" includes some pretty important stuff.

So much programming, so little information. What is the purpose of a news program? Is it to enlighten, or to pander? Consider the definitions: to enlighten is to "give spiritual or intellectual insight, to inform or instruct"; to pander is to "cater to the lower tastes or desires of others or exploit their weaknesses". Which definition do you deem closest to what CNN is doing?

So why do I complain? On a national level or a local level, news coverage matters. I don’t think that the Terry Schiavo story was the most important national issue last week. CNN seemed to believe that it was the only important national issue! We seem to suffer from a national dysfunction in which we don’t talk about the issues that really matter. We would rather follow a national soap opera. If the "soap-opera" stories were really so important, they wouldn’t be dropped like a hot potato when the next one comes along. Unless the press persistently and simultaneously covers the really important issues, those issues won’t be adequately addressed. When that doesn’t happen, we all lose.

What do you call news coverage that is on all the time, is devoid of enlightenment, and is unresponsive to major world and national issues? I call it Persistent Vegetative Coverage. What should we do about it? I, for one, have decided to pull the plug.

Flint, Michigan

April 5, 2005