The ethical issue involved with the movie “Morning Glory” was fluff vs. news. The morning news shows are known for their soft entertainment value and very little for their actual hard news. The debate is whether it is okay for a news program to run stories that are based purely on getting the ratings.
I feel that capitalism gives our society a unique democratic opportunity. Because the success of a television program is based on its ratings, we are, in a way, voting on the programming they put on for us to watch. Meaning, if we thought what they were doing was unethical and chose not to watch, they wouldn’t get the ratings, and advertisers wouldn’t pay for time. In this case, the stations would either have to change or they would go out of business. This means the programming we see on TV is a direct result of what the general population wants to see. It is our own fault.
To me, this is all an issue of labels. Is it wrong to play a program that is just for entertainment? Of course not, but is it okay to do that and call it news? Maybe the real issue is the fact that these shows are labeled morning news. If we started calling them morning gossip, or morning mindless wake up time, maybe there would be less of a debate. There are plenty of opportunities to get hard news, and if that is what we really want than we need to pay more attention to it. One fear I have is hard news becoming so unprofitable it stops being produced. I wouldn’t, however, blame the morning news for this. I would look at myself and my community and wonder why we took good journalism and hard facts for granted.
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