We may come to miss Crossfire…
Interesting things always happen during a blogging break: Armstrong Williams loses his newspaper syndication and CNN cancels Crossfire.
As for Armstrong, I should send him a thank-you card for offering my Issues in Media Ethics class a juicy situation to discuss the first week of the semester. To justify using a textbook that offers no case studies, I told my students today that “the media always provide.”
But what do I think about life without Crossfire? I have mentioned Crossfire many times on this blog–always negatively and, I think, deservedly so. I agree with Jon Stewart and said so here and here.
Crossfire was entertainment. CNN demoted it to 30 minutes and gave it bum time slot recently. The audience has fallen below half a million. Here are a few possible conclusions to draw:
1. Fewer people find partisan ranting entertaining.
2. Other cable networks produce more entertaining ranting.
3. Citizens want intelligent and rational debate of the issues.
4. Citizens prefer less ideologically balanced rant shows.
Of these I’m liking #4 best. I’m thinking a show such as Hannity & Colmes is the new model, in which a partisan good-guy beats up on a hapless and ineffective caricature of the political other.
Okay, here’s another conclusion: I’m not so sure the cancelation of Crossfire is such good news. I certainly admire the stated reason:
CNN/U.S. President Jonathan Klein sided yesterday with comedian Jon Stewart, who used a “Crossfire” appearance last fall to rip the program as partisan hackery. “I think he made a good point about the noise level of these types of shows, which does nothing to illuminate the issues of the day,” Klein said in an interview. Viewers need “useful” information in a dangerous world, he said, “and a bunch of guys screaming at each other simply doesn’t accomplish that.”
Crossfire at least made the attempt to pit two opposing ideologies on something like an equal footing. All participants sat at the same small table. They faced each other in equal numbers. And each participant was a well-known player with some measure of gravitas.
Is it possible we will wake up some day wishing for Crossfire’s return?
I doubt I’ll be wishing for C’fire’s return any time soon, but I tend to see its cancellation as another minor slide-divergent lending a wedge between partisan media. What I mean is that I agree with you that we’ll continue to see the mainstream flooded with one-sided goodies who bash on the false, easy-to-mischaracterize models of the other (a thrashing of the antithetical, vague). So even though C’fire annoyed so many of us for its attempt to pass as engaged argumentation and dialogue, the program’s cancellation–for better or worse–might point to a trend: fewer and fewer *mass-circulated* discursive spaces where framing and re-framing get sorted out.
Haven’t watched it in years and years. Stopped liking it because of the ranting OVER each other. I can stand a rant, but my ears have grown too old to try to filter simultaneos rants.
Don’t watch Fox H&C either, but never did. Can’t say one way or the other.
Won’t miss CF, though. Nope, not one bit.