In the 1967 Paul Newman vehicle Cool Hand Luke, the unnamed “Captain” (Strother Martin), who oversees the prison in which Luke resides, delivers a line which the American Film Institute (AFI) ranks #11 among its list of top 100 quotations in American cinema.

What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.

This sentence is most often employed by people who are talking past each other or, as in the case of Cool Hand Luke, one person fails to heed another’s advice or warning.  However, it is equally applicable in situations when one person or entity has access to information and opts not to share it.  Which brings us to today’s post and the failure by the corporate media of all political and ideological stripes to recognize an opportunity to disseminate unfiltered facts and objective analysis to their viewing audiences.

Let’s begin by examining the difference in viewership between cable news networks and the Sunday news shows.  It is no secret that Fox News Channel leads in the number of average daily viewers as demonstrated below for the week of February 27 thru March 5. (Source: TVNewser, March 7, 2017)

CABLE NEW NETWORK/AVERAGE DAILY AUDIENCE (in 000s)
Fox News Channel/3,474
MSNBC/1,569
CNN/1,372
HLN/285

In contrast, viewership for the Sunday network news shows on March 5 presents an entirely different picture. (Source: MediaLife Magazine, March 12, 2017)

SUNDAY NEWS SHOW/TOTAL AUDIENCE (in 000s)
NBC Meet the Press/4,128
CBS Face the Nation/3,483
ABC This Week/3,336
FOX News Sunday/1,663

Assuming viewership this past Sunday was in line with the previous week’s numbers, let’s see how the four networks chose to inform their audiences (~12.5 million Americans) about the top news story of the week, release of the Republican health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.  This is best done by reviewing the list of guests invited by each program to address the pros and cons of the American Health Care Act.

SUNDAY NEWS SHOW/GUESTS
ABC/White House Budget Director Michael Mulvaney & Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR)
CBS/ House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) & Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
FOX/Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) & White House economic adviser Gary Cohn
NBC//HHS Secretary Tom Price & Governor John Kasich (R-Ohio)

If you were looking for someone to objectively summarize the bill and how the various provisions might affect different segments of the population, sorry, you were out of luck.  Where was a representative from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has done perhaps the most exhaustive post mortem on the GOP proposal (http://kff.org/health-reform/)?  Or practicing physicians and hospital administrators who might share the potential impacts on their patients?

Maybe the news divisions of the four major networks honestly believe talking heads, not objective analysis, equals ratings.  But emerging evidence suggests otherwise.  One example is the Rachel Maddow Show.  This morning the Associated Press (AP) reported Maddow’s audience has doubled to 2.3 million viewers compared to February, 2016.  AP attributes this increase in popularity to the following.

Maddow has decided to cover the Trump administration like a silent movie, so the show could pay more attention to what is being done rather than what is being said.

Hopefully, other news programs will take note. To paraphrase #95 on the AFI top quotations, “Carpe Diem.  Seize the day, boys.  Make your NEWS (as opposed to LIVES in the origin) extraordinary.”  (Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poets Society)

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP