Every time I turn on the TV, there is some form of news going on. No matter what. The thing is, it’s not real news! I don’t know if the news is the same everywhere else, but here in Southern California, our news consists of a 20 second blip about world terrorism and intercontinental conflicts; Immedietly after that is a 5 minute story about a man that got a cat down from a tree. What the fuck is wrong with that picture?? What happened to REAL news? We don’t want to hear about that stupid girl down the street that went caroling on Christmas or that old guy that has a bent wheel on his wheelchair! We want to hear news that has importance in our daily lives, like whether we’re going to die in a nuclear blast or whether there’s been a terrible tragedy that afflicts a lot of people. Goddammit, even it’s a slow day, you think the fucking news station could find a more worthwhile story to report than “The Waking effects of coffee”.
Furthermore, when they actually decide to report real news, they ALWAYS report it wrong! Those assholes take up valuable air-time for this incredibly stupid shit, air-time that could be other wise used for a cool tv show like “Drew Carrey” or “The Simpsons”. Give us the news dammit, not some fucked up blurb about the stupid girl that learned how to braid her hair.
Monster: I know what you mean. In general I’m quite smug about the quality of reporting on my fave channel, CBC. It’s got much more foreign coverage than a lot of American and other corporate news channels, and the quality of reporting is quite high. However, fairly often I see a story, raise an eyebrow, and go, “Meanwhile, in the REAL news…”
Read Noam Chomsky’s Necessary Illusions for more on this.
I especially love the ‘behind the scenes’ story of the movie of the week they just showed.
What really pisses me off is live coverage of events that pre-empt regular programming. Last time there was a jet crash off the coast, they cut in on the prime time shows.
Now, I can see it if they just cut in, give us the details they have, and then return to the show. But these pukes cut in and stay in long after they have any relevant information to pass on.
They repeat themselves endlessly and speculate wildly. I just wish they would investigate, get some facts, and THEN cut in! Is that so much to ask?
Don’t watch TV if you don’t want to be treated like the lowest common denominator. Or watch interesting channels like QVC. Or chuck everything and move to Hawaii like I did.
Life’s too short to have problems that taking tours from the cruise ships every day won’t solve.
On second thought, you can visit Hawaii, but then get the hell out. My island is almost 5,000 square miles and there are already 120,000 people living here.
“News” is whatever people are interested in hearing about(which includes “people who are not you.”) Quite often, a TV news outlet decides they are going to cut sports and weather significantly, if not completely, shy away from “features,” and concentrate solely on hard news and analysis. You know what inevitably happens? Their ratings plummet. It happened most recently in, I believe, Chicago. So if you have a problem with what’s on the news, blame the audience. The news department is, quite literally, giving them exactly what they want.
Anybody who expects some noble behavior from an industry whose one and only purpose is to deliver large, demographically correct audiences to its advertisers is fooling him- or herself anyway.
Try “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS if you like your news dry, substantive, with plenty of analysis and coverage of big, bad issues.
I live in D.C. where recent local news consists of (usually in about this order):
a) Manhole covers blowing up in Georgetown.
b) Where in the D.C.'burbs is Elian Gonzalez?
c) What did Deion Sanders eat for breakfast and what is he wearing? Did he have a bowel movement?
d) Weather
e) Tiger Woods
f) Goddamn piece of shit stock market.
g) How to shop for shoes.
h) Does this popular household product actually work?
i) A tour of a local rich person’s house
j) Regis Philbin’s new line of men’s clothing
k) A poor black grandmother shot dead while out for her morning walk that she takes every day to recover from a stroke.
l) Poor black kids shooting each other
Amazingly, television news stations just give people what they want to see. I know, I know: this sounds like a typical media apologist’s line. But really, they do. If they didn’t, no one would watch, and they’d lose ratings, which mean money.
If you can think back ten or fifteen years ago, television news was very much the way you’d like it to be. Pretty much the only things they showed were the wars, the murders, the political wrangling, etc.
But then their customers (us) started complaining. “Give us good news!” they said. “Don’t show us all the bleak happenings! You’re harshing our buzz!” And so, they gave the people what they wanted, and changed their formats and their priorities. If the public starts to clamor to go back to the old way, you’ll definitely see a shift. Shtations’ revenues depend on it.
That said, of course, anyone who gets their news exclusively from television is a raging idiot who deserves what he or she gets.
“Tune in tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. for a special report on the horrible disease that COULD BE KILLING YOUR FAMILY RIGHT NOW. And now, back to you, Jim.”
It should be inserted in between every other topic in my earlier list. Apologies to the Pitizens for the self-referential nature of this post.
One of the funniest moments I can remember happened on WBAL radio (Baltimore) recently. The talk show host was interviewing a guy who wrote a book about how “If it bleeds it leads” dictates what goes into local news programming decisions. Halfway through the interview, the WBAL TV evening news anchor calls in (It is a call-in show) and launches into an attack on this guy about how journalistic integrity determines what he does on the air. In the next breath he says that they poll the viewers and give them what they want. That would be enough but after a savagely heated 10 minute exchange between these guys the station goes to commercial and what’s the first spot that runs? A spot for that evening’s news done by the same anchor about how the lead-in on the news tonight is “What you don’t know about car seats could be killing your kids!” and the “Women’s doctor” segment of the news will tell you about the “Dangers of breast cancer diagnosis” and finally “What we found in your pharmacists dumpster”
Journalistic integrity?
Bleeds=Leads
You decide.
I quit watching.
I expect that shit from the regular news program, thats why I don’t watch. What irks me is when the pre-empt ‘Law and Order’ for 40 minutes to tell us something that could easily be said in 5 minutes.
Oh, they do choose their moments, don’t they? In my market, they cut away from whatever the latest big golf tournament (sorry, I’m not a fan, I don’t remember which) to show a news clip of a waterspout, in the middle of the bay, endangering no one, that was already over, instead of Tiger Woods’ last putt of the entire match. Granted, it was a given that he would win, but that pissed a LOT of golf fans off, apparently. The station was apologizing all night and all day the next day. It was pretty funny…