THE SPECTATOR

Frank Rich delivers live op-ed on campus

By Eric Kuhn Oct. 07, 2005

One of the most sought after columnists from the New York Times delivered a lecture to a standing room only crowd on Saturday, October 1. The lecture, at the Chapel, was sponsored by the Doris M. and Ralph E. Hansmann Lecture Series and titled: "On Arts, Culture, and Politics."

He was eloquently introduced by Chair of the English Department, Catherine Kodat. "I've been reading Frank Rich for years, and I was happy to see that the man I'd met in the work was very much the man as he is: funny, friendly, unpretentious, [and] smart," Kodak said after the lecture.

Rich's lesson was a lesson on the media and how it has evolved to what it has become today. He began by comparing the summer of 2005 to the summer of 2001. In both cases, the news media frantically reported on outbreaks of shark attacks (even though no evidence said that these years were worse than previous years), and the disappearance of a white woman (in 2001 it was Chandra Levy and in 2005 it was Natalee Holloway).

"We seem to have reached the point where, as a country, we sort of go to sleep for periods of time and ultimately wake up around Labor Day," Rich said. It was predictable that both of those summers ended with a bang and both those summers the disasters, he said. Al Queda was clearly stepping up organized activities before 9/11 and it seemed that everyone, besides the President, knew that a major storm in New Orleans would break the levies.

"The entertainment media has now reached a point, where reality, which we used to call the news and reality programs are both tweaked into something that resembles fiction," said Rich. "The press, to its own considerable failures, has wittingly and unwittingly collaborated with this process, both of television and broadcast media but also in government. We have more television channels that ever before, more access to news, yet somehow seem to have less information and less of a grasp of reality than ever before."

In this new world, filled with "infotainment," it is extremely hard to know where entertainment begins and information ends. "The biggest division in our culture is not between Red and Blue, but between entertainment and reality, between fiction and propaganda, between fiction, propaganda and the non-fiction of journalism," said Rich.

He continued with the major landmarks that helped shape the world of journalism. It started in the 1970s with ABC and a first in its kind mini-series called "Roots." This show was about the entire history of the African American experience and blended entertainment, history, and fiction. It was such a success that other station started to do the same and soon, "a certain barrier had been breached. We could take fictional techniques and apply them to history and make it into a commercial product that would hook people."

Ted Turner was struggling to get CNN, a 24/7 news organization, up and running in the early 1990s when the Gulf War began. At the time, CNN was considered a joke, until someone decided to make that station into a 24/7 mini-series, extending the 6:30 news. The Gulf War became the first War to have a logo, "War in the Gulf," theme music and an extremely cheap cast of hundreds who were willing to go on air and give their thoughts (even if they had no expertise in that area). "It did for CNN, what Roots had done for ABC, [and] transformed the whole idea of how television news would produce and manage events," said Rich. "We learned almost nothing about the Golf War."

Other stories soon took on that style, starting with the OJ Simpson trial: "it was like watching a Warhol movie in the 60s with focused on the Empire State Building for six hours. Yet people were riveted. It was a hit&" This type of hype for a story was repeated during the plane crash of John Kennedy Jr. and the car crash of Princess Diana.

"Media Thon" ￜ 24/7 news mini-series ￜ was perfected, and by the mid nineties, CNN had competition (MSNBC and Fox News), the use of the internet to gain information was booming and the media outlets had been taken over by huge corporations that had the power to decide what America would see. The Lewinsky scandal provided a 24/7 soap opera of pure sensation. Journalism was changed forever and there was no turning back.

"The one thing that can be said about show business is that their values have nothing to do with journalism," said Rich. "The values of journalism are to try to get the facts as accurately as you can, as fast as you can, to present them as fairly as possible, to analyze them as&passionately and judicially as possible. That is not the aim of show business. The aim of show business is drama, it's creating stall, it's sex, it's quick cutting, it's violence, it's sensationalism, it's a hole other world."

The Iraq War revealed that the "Bush administration was incredibly shrewd in the change of the culture and knew how to manipulate the media." This was "Masterpiece Theatre" at its height as the administration "sold" to America the idea that Saddam Hussein was related to Al Queda and there were Weapons of Mass Destruction. Sure enough, there were "countdown clocks," logos, theme music, "Shock and Awe" and censorship by the government of the air waves (not allowing Americans to see the dead). Rich described it as, "a selective view of reality."

"For those of you who are my generation or older, it's too late to change this culture," Rich said. For the students, he said now "is a time for change. It is a time when the grownups in charge are baffled by what is going on& and it's really up to smart people, people who feel like the culture is important to actually get their hands dirty and go into it and rebel against it∧ actually infiltrating it and changing it. There is an opportunity there I hope some of you will go seize it."