DENNIS MILLER LIVE on television news

[4/22/02]

What does Dennis Miller think of television news? Read this! The following is an excerpt from "Dennis Miller Live" that aired on April 6th on HBO (transcribed by Bryan Tulwits)

...but then we are used to getting Stewart Little sized, foreskin slivers of information and calling them "news" as of late.

Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but these days truth in media has been pushed further into the back seat than loose change during a shuttle launch. I think that it's a problem that you can't watch the nightly news without longing for the relative intellectual integrity of those thought bubbles on "Blind Date".

You know, if you are looking for empirical truth on TV you are watching the wrong kinescope. TV news wants you entertained first, informed... maybe. There is more useless eye candy in 10 seconds of CNN Headline News than in 24 hours of the Cartoon Network. And don't try to argue that all of the sh*t on the screen on CNN is information that I need to know, nobody cares about the temperature in Bozeman Montana, not even the people in Bozeman, OK. That's why they moved to Bozeman... they've given up.

Look, the truth is that in the cost-conscious bottom line America we all live, all the major news organizations have been removing key positions like they were editing an Iranian edition of the Karma Sutra. Instead of reporters on the scene gathering facts, what we are left with is an overstuffed, oxygen-starved, fish farm of open mouthed trout, swimming in circles with absolutely no idea of what they are talking about.

The other night, MSNBC had a leading authority on al Qaeda on, and it turned out he is only credentials because his name is "Al Kada."

You know in today's information economy, the old journalistic mandate "Get it fast, get it first, and get it right" has been down sized to just getting it fast and first.

Today's idea of an investigative report is one that they remembered to run a spell check on. And the line between fact and opinion gets stepped on more frequently than the feet of a circus clown slow dancing with a scuba diver.

Also, I don't trust anything said by a news anchor who doesn't have a believable hair piece on. How am I supposed to take seriously any guy with hair that makes the molded plastic thatch on GI Joe's head look natural? Why should I believe his mouth when his scalp is screaming "liar?" Every time I look at Sam Donaldson I keep thinking "This just on!".

And nothing is more skewed than local news during sweeps weeks. The I-Team takes their hidden cameras down to any business that doesn't advertise with their station, to ferret out potential dangers to the consumer. You ever see them do a story on used car salesmen? No, because they pump too much ad revenue into the firm. Instead they storm the barely English speaking mechanic who's trying to feed his eight kids, that charged the under cover reporter with a $40,000 surveillance briefcase cam an extra nickel for a spark plug.

And it's all hyped with that overly dramatic upcoming story tease, there is a sound like Adam West reading "War of the Worlds" to the blind.

Look, we know that each of our newspapers comes with an established point of view; The New York Times is out of a liberal north-eastern academic, The Wall Street Journal, that of a conservative corporate America, and USA Today is that of Sean Penn's character in "I am Sam", after inhaling paint fumes. Really, I saw it in a pie chart. But in most cases, there is no liberal conservative bias, come on, does any body really believe that chick Ashleigh Banfield has a bias, other than launching her own line of eye wear? Come on. The sad truth is we don't object to the slanted nature of our news because being told how to think is easier than figuring it out ourselves. Media bias is just the latest in the long line of American labor saving devices that began with the cotton gin, and will likely end with us swaddled in the full sensory La-Z-Boy of the future, while a holographic Wolf Blitzer gnome dances on our man-breast and yips "Bad stuff happened to other people in the world today, but not to you."

Lets be honest with ourselves; you want the truth? You can't stay awake for the truth. We want police chases, mud slides, world leaders caught on tape having sex with their daughters piano teacher, we don't give an embryonic rat's ass about Enron, the middle east, or the new campaign finance reform bill because it is way too complicted and depressing.

When we come home from a hard day at the office, all we want to do is kick up our feet onto the coffee table, pop open a cold one, turn on the television and be reassured that everyone in the world is more f'd up than we are, especially the people reporting on it.

Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

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