Television will do anything for a rating... anything!
Interpretation
The quote highlights how television prioritizes ratings over ethical standards or integrity.
Paddy Chayefsky's quote reflects the often ruthless nature of the television industry, where the pursuit of viewership and ratings can lead to sensationalism and a disregard for moral considerations. It suggests that broadcasters may compromise their values and integrity in order to attract a larger audience, illustrating a critique of how media can manipulate content for popularity rather than substance.
In practice
A commentary on media ethics during a journalism seminar.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.
Television is democracy at its ugliest.
We've established the most enormous medical entity ever conceived... and people are sicker than ever. We cure nothing! We heal nothing!
The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism.
The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we [journalists], too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture!
It's great to engage with the mainstream media to get messages out, but the most empowering tool is to create records of our lives, and our own images, which are not filtered through judgements, biases, or misunderstandings.
As CNN saw our growth in African-American viewership, they affirmed a fundamental truth of news coverage - people will watch you if they see themselves in what you report. It doesn't hurt if the people doing the reporting look like them, too.
I really do think we're going through a period of concentration of ownership of media, and we're starting to see the effects at the editorial level, and it's all bad. This increased pressure for profits every quarter, smaller news hole, less coverage of important stuff - the extent that it's become one giant infotainment industry.
The reporting of news has to be understood as propaganda for commodities, and events by images.
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