Joe Ferullo

Joe Ferullo: “It’s been a horrifying natural disaster — a storm that only comes along once every 500 years — but Hurricane Ian has also triggered something else: a reminder of what our politics and media used to be before the era of endless polarization. Appreciate this while you can. Chances are it won’t last.”

For most of his life, Donald Trump has wielded an immense superpower: the ability to bend and twist reality to meet his needs of the moment. But now it seems he’s losing that magic touch, especially with a group of allies that has been with him since the very beginning — the media.

Joe Ferullo: “Nobody likes journalists. Hardly anyone one trusts them. Their work feels like an unending cascade of plagues, war, floods, and fire. And it’s gotten so bad that more and more people are now avidly avoiding the news completely. But journalism and journalists aren’t the main bad guys. The real problem is not news itself, but the way our society consumes it — and the danger it represents is not just for the news business itself, but for our entire society as it becomes less informed about the critical issues of the day.”

Turns out the best way to conduct a congressional hearing is to treat it like a story on 60 Minutes. The House Jan. 6 Select Committee is in the middle of rewriting an old political script, dispensing with some well-worn rituals that seem frozen in time. Those have been replaced in these hearings with something that looks more like a fast-moving segment of investigative television — strong emotions, urgent soundbites, and a clear portrayal of good guys vs. bad guys.

CNN has a problem. It wants to do real news on cable television. Here’s the challenge facing the nearly 42-year-old network: Real news is for the curious. At its best, television news is delivered by people and for people who don’t believe they already know everything. But cable news today is dominated by opinionated anchors, reporters and viewers who are the opposite of curious.

Joe Ferullo: “The passionate romance between Twitter and journalism suddenly seems to be on the rocks — and that’s good news for people who care about real news, delivered straight.”

Joe Ferullo: “It’s time to eliminate television coverage from Supreme Court confirmation hearings. These Senate proceedings continue to devolve into an opportunity for politicians to play to the cameras, mollify their political bases, and create soundbites that will make effective campaign commercials for the next election cycle.”

It looks like exhausted news consumers — battered by polarized cable channels that elevate opinion over facts — are finally being heard. Piece by piece, a post-Trump media world is starting to take shape. It looks something like a universe where resentment and resistance are pushed to the side and straight news steps back into the spotlight. In just the past few weeks, several high-profile developments point to an emerging correction in journalism:

What viewers are seeing now — and what Vladimir Putin probably did not think about — is what happens when television journalists are not tied down by equipment, relying on bulky satellite phones and trunk-sized microwave dishes. Now, a professional LiveU unit — and others like it — fits in a backpack and costs about $1,500. For another $45 a month, you have constant contact with a cloud-based internet connection anywhere in the world. It works with a small portable high-grade camera, or with the camera on a smartphone. All of this makes it extremely difficult for any government to control the narrative anymore.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought something cable viewers too-rarely see: Real journalists covering a real story, free of frantic hyperbole and driven by facts on the ground. Reporting on the war could be an inflection point. It offers cable news — especially CNN — a chance to rethink their programming focus and move away from obsessive political coverage. But two hurdles block the path forward: television news economics and the addictive nature of polarization.

The rapid-fire removal of Jeff Zucker as CNN’s president last week has led to a sustained backlash inside the organization. Anchors and reporters discussed their confusion on air; others confronted Warner Media chief Jason Kilar directly at a meeting inside the cable channel’s Washington bureau. Maybe what needs to change at CNN, then, is not the top person but the way their corporate chieftans deal with workplace romantic relationships at all levels.

The legalization of marijuana in several states has sparked a brand-new genre of mainstream media feature reporting: in-depth exploration of all the fun things readers can do while under the influence.

Joe Ferullo: The final weeks of 2021 have seen a rush of commentary accusing mainstream media of accentuating Biden administration missteps, while ignoring significant accomplishments. But this is nothing new. It’s a hardened habit among the Washington press corps that traces its origins back nearly half-a-century, with the notorious scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. That’s not to say reporters should somehow ignore governmental failures, mistakes or corruption. This is more about what Washington correspondents, producers and editors consider important news day-in and day-out: What goes on page one; which story makes it into a broadcast’s first segment? Where is the balance? It would help viewers, readers, and voters if the media acknowledged that sometimes — even in Washington — good news is real news too.

Joe Ferullo: “The nation seems to be in the midst of yet another contagion — not the omicron variant, but reality celebrities convinced they should be high-profile political leaders.”

For anyone tuned in to television news, this past week was very emotional. I mean that literally. Tears flowed through the screen and difficult feelings were exposed by prominent personalities, all in very public settings. It hasn’t always been that way. Over many years, audiences have slowly but steadily changed how they react to strong emotions brought into their homes by TV cameras and close-ups. Last week was something of a breakthrough in that transformation.

The end is near for television news as we know it. That’s the clear signal coming from an important set of Nielsen company viewership data that seems like good (or at least not-so-bad) news for cable and broadcast — until you take a closer look at the numbers and trends.

Society expects journalists to fill several important functions: check on government power, community watchdog, reliable source of basic information. But there’s one role we really don’t need from the news business — life coach. And yet, as Americans move out of the pandemic and into more normal lives, reporters, editors and producers are flooding the media universe with a heavy stream of soft stories filled with trite advice on everything from how to hug again to the safest method for dipping back into the habit of gossipy behavior.

Joe Ferullo: “Donald Trump is gone, but the damage done to news media lingers on. Thanks to the former president, journalism has been “Jerry Springerized” — addicted to conflict and madness in the search for audience.”

Joe Ferullo: “With Donald Trump banned from Twitter and exiled to Mar-a-Lago, television news channels find themselves searching for a new tone and a fresh direction. Here’s a modest proposal: America’s overheated, hyper-dramatic cable personalities might want to take a page from Jen Psaki — because the White House press secretary is cool. And by that, I mean: “medium cool.”

It’s been called a “civil war” in some of the nation’s leading newsrooms, a battle between generations of reporters and writers over the directions and goals of journalism, especially in how it covers challenging topics like race, gender and a certain figure in the White House.

To gain viewers or boost readership, cover violent crime big-time, whether on the front page or the top of the newscast. But those very methods contribute to the madness many now feel about the nation’s unhealthy dependency on police and prison to solve every problem. Journalism needs to accept its share of responsibility and change how it does business.

If the snapshot of this time is George Floyd on the ground, Derek Chauvin’s knee hard on his neck, society moves in one direction. But other images entice with a competing narrative: looters loading stolen goods into waiting cars; rogue protesters setting fires; graffiti on national monuments in Washington. For too many nights now, that narrative has gained strength — and moves the country closer to an outcome where force can be seen as both a short-term tactic and a long-term solution.

The next front line in the COVID-19 battle will be struggles with the psychological damage. Concerns over society-wide anxiety and depression are increasing as people face the physical and economic fallout of the pandemic. But there’s a contributing factor to that growing alarm hiding in plain sight. Call it the “pundemic,” the parade of on-camera and online pundits delivering daily doses of dread and doom, based less on science and more on science fiction.

Joe Ferullo: “It turns out broadcasting delivers us something suddenly in short supply: human connection. The universal themes and populist appeal of most network shows allow everyone stuck at home to watch something together. And the set-in-stone broadcast TV schedule means you share that viewing experience in real time with millions of other people across the country.”

Joe Ferullo: Reporting on presidential candidates can be a lot like high school romance: It’s all about crushes and rejections, falling hard — only to fall quickly out of love. After New Hampshire, journalists and pundits are desperately scanning the cafeteria for their next soul mate. But now that voters are actually part of the equation, the media’s search for love will need to evolve.

Iowa and New Hampshire are known for the charm of their retail politics — town halls, handshakes and hash browns. They are also the home of retail media — very local newspapers, TV and radio stations. But these days, small-town news is in big financial trouble, profoundly reshaping how the electorate in these key states now size-up candidates.

Joe Ferullo: “The evening newscasts, even now, remain an important counter to all of this, a way to escape the deluge and to begin sorting out what really matters among the day’s events. That mission is never more valuable than in days like these, when so much alleged information seems unmoored from context and substance.”

Emotion now blankets the media landscape like an infant’s crib at bedtime. Google “Shepard Smith emotional,” and up come nearly 3 million results, many of them focused on the Fox anchor’s recent visceral response to immigrant suffering. A search of “Rachel Maddow crying” delivers more than 1 million offerings. Contemporary culture trusts feelings over facts, rewards heated emotion — tears or anger — and rejects medium cool. The effect on journalism is unmistakable. And a lot of the blame can be placed on those all-too-common twin devils: television and the internet.