This comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal jives with my opinion of American news networks as I mentioned in my previous post.
American news networks seem to universally never cover anything newsworthy. They cover election news and stuff in politics when relevant, but the rest of it is just buzz.
The news networks are often set up where they service an area of about 5 million people or more. Within that area they could pick a story about how one person is over a hundred or how a single school out of the hundreds needs books. The news never covers something like a school district wide book shortage by having in depth interviews with the librarians from that district.
Another example from my local news. They’ve jumped all over a recent murder case. Some of the headlines are “Crime On The Rise” or “What Can You Do To Protect Yourself?” The murder was committed by a self-confessed psychopath. There is no crime on the rise in this situation, its just an individual. There sadly isn’t really a way to protect yourself from crazy people either. What I noticed from these headlines was that the local news is capitalizing on the fear the headlines and story creates to push more of their newspapers/page views.
I do get a little conflicted at times on the issue though. I never feel like reading or watching American news its almost all fear, puff pieces, or politic information I can get faster from the internet. But when I do watch it I occasionally see why they reported on that topic. With the psychopath murderer, how could you not report on that as a local news agency? It’d be foolish not to as it sells papers and it’d be dishonest to the public. We deserve to know that someone like that was in the neighborhood.
It’s just when there isn’t something to report as sensational as that, the new flounders. There could be constant updates on the situation in Ukraine or a daily update on WHY stock numbers changed instead of just the numbers themselves. Those important stories could easily fill the news when something else interesting isn’t happening locally or in DC. Instead, the top story today is “Coaches Turn Out to Hear Athletics Policy Debate”
Really? I can see the value of the story, but is it front page material? I don’t think so.
Just some of my rambling thoughts.
-Mister Ed
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