DENNIS PRAGER
DENNIS PRAGER / work for ABC as a news commentator. My livelihood depends on being well informed. I never watch network news. Network news utterly distorts reality. How would you like to develop...
...The little news that we are given by the networks is chosen for emotional impact—that is, for entertainment value—not for actual news value...
...To underscore my credibility on this issue, note that my livelihood is dependent on my being well informed...
...I work for ABC as a news commentator and talk show host on KABC in Los Angeles...
...Together with Joseph Telushkm, he wrote Why the Jews...
...And when there is no video footage, the event, no matter how important, is almost never reported...
...The reason' Unlike the Israelis, the Chinese allow no television cameras into Tibet...
...The New Republic compared network news reporting in the presidential campaigns of 1968 and 1988...
...If you must watch television in the early evening, watch "Wheel of Fortune," which, thank God, is broadcast opposite the network news in most American cities...
...It can be done All you have to do is stop watching the network news This is meant in all seriousness...
...Ratings, not news, determine news programming...
...The primary reason is not antisemitism—it is video access...
...Five million people were either killed or exiled from their homes by the Soviets...
...The consequence is an utterly perverted view of the world...
...it is distor-tional...
...Television news should be avoided for these reasons: • During the half hour that people devote to watching the news, after commercials, only 18 minutes of news remains...
...Precisely for these reasons I never watch the network news Instead, I carefully read three daily newspapers, books and journals (I recommend the New York Times for world and national news, the Wall Street Journal for editorials and opinion pieces, and the New Republic and Commentary for liberal and conservative perspectives, respectively...
...No group should be more aware of the destructive nature of the networks PRAGER continued from page 14 than supporters of Israel...
...Yet, in 1985, in the middle of that near genocide, ABC news broadcast a total of 10 8 minutes of news on Afghanistan, morally and politically the most important world event at the time More time is given to the nonfatal shooting of a single Palestinian in any given two day period...
...As columnist George Will wrote, "If Lincoln were alive today, he would be forced to say, 'Read my lips: no more slavery.'" • Virtually the only criterion for what news is broadcast is the level of drama in the video footage Riots, shootings and wars are most reported...
...The Reason for Anti-semitism (Touchstone, 1985...
...Israel allows video cameras, police states do not Were it not for television news, there would have been a few nots on the West Bank, but no intifada Everything was engineered for Western television audiences—for example, sending children to fight soldiers...
...As University of Southern California professor Ian Mitroff has written The length of a sound bite is inversely proportional to the complexity of the world " Statistics bear this out...
...Until the last year of the Soviet nine-year war in Afghanistan, Americans relying on network news learned almost nothing about the destruction of Afghanistan...
...How would you like to develop your mind, contribute to your home life, make a significantly better America and help Israel—all effortlessly...
...Videotape tonight's news and see if you have the slightest interest in watching it tomorrow...
...Those 18 minutes are the equivalent of approximately two newspaper columns In other words, most people can read 10 to 20 times more news in 30 minutes than they hear on television...
...ideas, context and understanding are least...
...People should therefore be honest with themselves—they watch the news for entertainment, not for news...
...More than any other nation, Israel has suffered from television's reliance on action videos...
...I can think of few things as easily done that would so dramatically improve the individual and society...
...The world's greatest evils have usually been ignored, while violence in democracies is thoroughly exaggerated...
...There is an easy way to ascertain how empty network news is...
...Either alternative is more real than the network news...
...And the rule for ABC, NBC and CBS is: "No video, no news" Yet people think that the network news informs them Network news is Nintendo for adults Nintendo is the television video game system that rivets the attention of millions of young Americans by constantly parading before them characters in action That is exactly what television news does...
...And if you don't like "Wheel of Fortune," watch a plant grow...
...Psychiatrist Walter Reich, a dove on the territories issues (as I am), wrote a powerful article on the effects of television news The thesis was: "Not all intifadas are created equal " Television news watchers never learn of the near obliteration of Tibetan culture and the mass murder of Tibetans by the Chinese...
...While most Americans consider television in general a wasteland, many people exclude news—especially the network news—from their negative assessment Yet network news may be the worst thing on television For while everyone knows that sitcoms and dramas are fiction, few people seem to be aware how network news utterly distorts reality...
...It cannot be too strongly stressed If the networks don't have an action tape of an event, that event did not occur That is why, for decades now, Americans have been saturated with videos of violence in democracies, while TV news has virtually ignored the great evils of our time...
...I have been a columnist, and I continue to write on contemporary events for newspapers, journals and for my own publication, Ultimate Issues...
...Surely, you wouldn't mind reading a good newspaper the next day...
...S* Demos Prager unites and publishes Ultimate Issues, a quarterly journal on personal, political and religious issues...
...The average sound bite of the candidates' words fell from 42.3 seconds in 1968 to 9 8 seconds in 1988, while "the time the networks devoted to visuals of the candidates, unaccompanied by their words, increased by more than 300 percent...
...Television news so oversimplifies the world that it actually diminishes the mind's capacity to understand the world Watching the network news is worse than not informative...
Vol. 16 • February 1991 • No. 1
