Ted Turner and the cost of all that immediacy has wrought

There are many avenues for reflection on the death Wednesday of media legend Ted Turner.

He may not have “set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime,” as the New York Times quoted him from a 1998 Reader’s Digest interview, but he had an undeniably profound impact on matters ranging from the environment to sports to entertainment to, of course, the news media. It’s that last one that dominates my thoughts today, specifically the so-called 24-hour news cycle that Turner pioneered.

In the early 1980s, Turner began to demonstrate the appeal of broadcast television news programming that could latch onto news stories as they broke and follow them from beginning to end in real time. We take such immediacy for granted today, and few would question its value for informing the public about certain news events or developments.

At the same time, it’s also hard to avoid seeing how the concept has been somewhat turned on its head — or perhaps “dropped” is a more apt description — by time and by the internet and social media. Our attention can be immovably riveted to the events in a war zone, at a crime scene or even at a political spectacle. But what cable news programming proved much less capable of has been providing context, giving observers space and time to contemplate what they are seeing and hearing and to understand its diverse dimensions.

Ironically, that weakness has been exacerbated by the medium’s success. The news is much more varied and deep than wars and natural disasters and disappearances of attractive young women. Yet, to get and keep viewers, 24-hour broadcasts have to concentrate their attention on these kinds of dramatic and heart-grabbing events. When they focus on the more analytical or topical — like government actions, say, or taxation or climate change — they must infuse the reporting with added doses of controversy to produce the kind of drama that produces ratings.

The evolution of that dynamic resulted in the kinds of point-counterpoint confrontations between pundits and politicians that frequently proved to be more akin to yelling matches in search of verbal knockout punches than meaningful multi-dimensional examinations of complex topics. And as the 24-hour broadcast environment began to expand, it fostered more and more channels that built their appeal not on real information or clear-headed study of issues, but on stirring the passions of like-minded viewers.

And the internet, with its demands for likes and eyeballs, has injected steroids into that model, with an effect that one cannot but mourn as bad for our democracy and our values of tolerance and civility.

This is a bit of an aside, but this evolutionary experience reminds me of what the wonderful advance of electronic messaging has done to the mail.

As a boy, I used to walk to the post office twice a day in my little town to “pick up the mail” and, for many in larger towns, people had mail delivered to their door twice a day. And when it came, it included personal letters, post cards, greeting cards and all manner of communications, as well as, of course, bills and a little bit of advertising, including the Sears catalog.

Today, my postal carrier brings almost nothing of a personal nature. It’s a daily stream of bills, ads and specialty catalogs. I have three email addresses, all of them collecting messages by the minute, so much of it some form of advertising or mischief that I can barely elbow my way through it all to find out what is actually meaningful.

That, I think as I ponder the legacy of Ted Turner, is what electronics and the dominance of immediacy have wrought. It is, of course, a compelling and valuable advance, and I’m glad to have it.

But, oh, what a price it carries.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His book “To Nudge The World” has been named a Book of the Year by the Chicago Writers Association and is available at eckhartzpress.com.