Newshour Summary And Analysis

PBS Newshour is a public service program with daily updates on national, political, and foreign issues. Only on the weekends do they shorten their coverage to twenty-five minutes, to observe the possibility that people don’t want to eat a larger portion of their educational vegetables. Tuning in from my laptop at pbs.org to examine both one of these broadcasts, January twenty-second and the twenty-forth, I noticed certain aspects of an institutionalized quality that advocates to a more knowledge based demographic, though not as extreme as Sorkin’s example above. What does emerge are some placating ideologies of what is considered professional and authoritative, as if to advocate for an unaffected, fact-driven achievement that stand out as a
public service. While these qualities exist, I disagree with Ouellette’s critique crossing over to modern PBS channels, as the “enlightened democracy” that I observed wasn’t delivered in an exclusive way, but as an outreach to broader audiences. For example, the lack of visual or human interest material, in my opinion, is actually represented in these specific PBS Newshour episodes, in slight opposition Ouellette’s conclusion. While it does push for an “emphasized reason over passion, professionalism over advocacy” and “expert over personality”, there has been a noticeable shift in comparison to Ouellette’s observation of traditional knowledge-power relations in the PBS network programs (Ouellette, 119). Human interest stories; how to control a population of stray feral cats near San Francisco, extreme weather conditions, and advocating for “no child left off-line” are reported on in the episodes aired on January twenty-second and twenty-forth on PBS’s Newshour.
In my understanding, these story examples listed above do not fall into the category of educating the electorate and keeping it well informed under the name of the “guardians of enlightened democracy” (Ouellette, 121). Accompanied by scenery shots, fading in and out under dramatized edits, the stories above do give off an effort to engage the popular culture and audience. It seems a trade-off that these stories are presented to the public in tandem with a well fleshed out allotment for in-depth coverage of political, foreign and public trends in a qualitative, educational program. I suggest that more coverage on these human interest stories were born out of the competition with the other, sizable networks that are known for emotionally driven feature news coverage stories. In this light, Ouellette’s comment that certain programs like PBS were idealized as a process to “bring television back to the people”(Ouellette, 121), giving the general audience an incentive to tune into “news that matters” (KPBS). In this way, it seems that Newshour on PBS has reached a cultural compromise, becoming less dependent on individual responsibly when it comes to citizenship knowledge, and introducing a sentimental response from
their audience. The PBS journalists highlight the warmth behind the abandoned felines roaming the streets and the advances of public school and the children that it benefits. Applying a sense of passion for these subjects, the program is able to install ‘the best of both worlds’ to the audiences. Instead of a singular focus on trying to reform the public as an informed, idealized electorate, PBS has pivoted to training themselves as a more attainable show to the general audiences.
For instance, they tend to give mediation between the audience and the privilege that the PBS show’s traditional behavior of an enlightened social construct. Specifically, when bringing up insider knowledge about the National Review, a magazine of which I had no prior comprehension of, was explained to me clearly as an esteemed Republican news magazine and why it was important that it subbed Trump. In another example, the PBS moderators (which seemingly change with every episode to promote healthy diversity), broke down how and why the Iowa Caucus works, laying out the mechanisms of each candidate, and what makes the conferences so important to the election (Newshour, Jan 22). However, it is important for me to realize that I’ve been far more exposed to the public news format, as I listen almost daily to NPR, and must take into account that my experience may be why I see this program as a well- constructed balance between political culture and popular culture. All in all, my viewing of the PBS Newshour is not a full example of the preaching “enlightened democracy”, but instead collectively work more under the “omnivorous tastes” framework that Bourdieu suggests in the Newman and Levine reading, in ends to reach out and gain a broader audience instead of divorcing the social structure. It
is my conclusion that PBS is hard at work to allocate viewership, abandoning their past, isolating views against the “moronic mob” that Ouellette observed and invite participation by providing stories that cherish both the human interest and politically informative stories.