Apologies for My Cancerous Career in Trivial, Toxic TV News

What I Learned As A Proto-Influencer in the 1970s

As a reporter in Denver in the 1980s, I mostly covered crimes, festivals, and other stories with little value other than filling the growing time stations gave to “news” which was cheap to produce and still attracted ad dollars.

When I was around ten years old, I decided I wanted to be a TV news reporter. But there are so many things I wish I’d known before choosing my career. Unfortunately, they were things I had to learn the hard way over 31 years as a reporter, anchor, and corporate news executive before enjoying 18 years running my own video production company. Here’s a short list:

• As we know from smartphone use now, screens and the images and sounds on them are addictive. Like any addictive substance, they paralyze their victims, render them numb, dull, fixated, and sedentary.
• Most people don’t want facts, truth, or useful information. They want stories, myths, affirmation, and entertainment. Most don’t want to change their minds, think deeply or critically, or face their own mortality or weaknesses. They want proof their opinions are correct.
• The primary function of American TV is, by design, to sell stuff. News is considered by the few, remaining corporations who own TV to be like game shows, murder mysteries, or baseball. But ads are the most important shows. Many programs are just really long ads.
• From TV’s inception, viewers started imitating people they saw on TV. Studies…