In Support of Commentary

Pew Research has a new study entitled the State of the News Media 2013. Everyone is excited about this:

Opinion filled 85 percent of the content on MSNBC, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2013 State of the News Media report. On Fox News, commentary made up 55 percent of its coverage, while CNN was the only of the big three cable news channels to produce more straight reporting than opinion.
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Overall, the cable news landscape has undergone a major shift as “daytime programming now resembles primetime, with interviews and opinion replacing coverage of live events and breaking news,” the report stated. Interview segments are up 31 percent from 2007 to 2012, while live event coverage dropped 30 percent.

Having fewer journalists out in the field reporting news is a bad thing. Without reporters, our sense of what is going on in the world would probably be a lot fuzzier. And since reporting is more expensive than commentary, we should concerned that a lot of news outlets will provide too little reporting.

But devoting air-time to reporters and to "straight reporting" isn't necessarily that desirable. First, it obviously depends on what you are reporting on, a frivolous story is not worth reporting on. But more importantly, broadcasting a reporter live from an event is a pretty big waste of time and money. When a reporter is on camera they are by definition not trying to find out new things to report. Similarly, the money spent flying out camera crews and equipment would be more usefully spent on additional reporters in the field. These reporters could spend the time figuring out what is going on, and then call the station with the news, which the host could then relay to the audience at home. Spending airtime putting the actual reporter on camera is usually not necessary to supply the news.

Now sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words and getting footage from an important event can help give viewers substance. But we live in an era where the best footage is almost always captured by cell phones and put directly on the internet. Networks frequently use this footage anyway, so spending money capturing live footage is not always the best choice.

At the same time, commentary can be really valuable. It was great seeing news footage of Tahrir Square during the protests, but the time spent interviewing experts on Egypt was probably better, as it helped viewers put the events in their proper context. Commentary is also a more engaging way to present the news. When commentators are providing their opinion on an event, the viewer is almost always given the details of the event itself. This is done so they can follow along. Good commentary gives a fullness to the event being covered, and does so in a way that viewers usually find more entertaining than just straight news.

Commentary can be bad too, it can distort the events. But that is a problem with a particular commentator, not commentary in general.

Its not clear what the correct ratio is, and I think we should be concerned about the economic dynamics that lead to their being less reporters in general. But commentary isn't a bad thing.