News and Celebrity

Elizabeth Jensen’s piece on cable news organizations’ marquee-name buying spree misses the dispiriting central issue that TV news deficiencies are systemic in an approach that tries to be all things to all people (“News Still Counts at CNN. So Do Stars,” Feb. 3).

Most TV news anchors and reporters at cable network and local levels haven’t the journalistic skills to hold down a job at a third-rate newspaper.

Anchors, and some reporters, have become overpaid celebrities; that celebrity invariably affects the content and integrity of the stories they cover.

The news suffers from a constant tug-of-war between the “word people” and the “picture people”; stories are filtered through so many hands that accuracy and focus are often sacrificed on the altar of career-advancing slickness. Then there are those misspelled captions and mispronounced words and names.

Many of the images that accompany TV news stories are irrelevant to the stories being told.

Airline-safety stories are invariably accompanied by stock shots of jets taking off or landing. Pieces about everything from AIDS research to work on the Human Genome Project feature indistinguishable scenes of lab-coated technicians manipulating test tubes and spectral analyzers. This generic footage could be of researchers looking into new ways of decaffeinating coffee.

Like local news operations, the cable networks structure their telecasts around anchor teams, apparently to ensure that they appeal to the broadest possible demographic, ignoring the sad truth that the choreographed banter among the teamed participants looks ludicrous and serves no journalistic purpose.

Will television news operations ever abandon the path of least resistance? No, not until TV news no longer has to worship at the altar of the implacable ratings gods, surely as corrupting an influence as soft money is to politics.

AVIE HERN

Los Angeles