alexpgp | It ain't news...

A question, asked in a comment:

news programs on broadcast tv are usually a mirror of that what's in the newspapers & online. and although most of the time it's the same stuff about the middle east and afghanistan, sometimes it is something new.

why would you say that they're a waste of time?

My answer:

Permit me to disagree. Broadcast media is of necessity a subset of what is available online and in print, because there are only so many minutes of broadcast time available.

When you combine this circumstance with the fact that news shows must compete with other shows for the almightly "share" of viewers, broadcast journalism becomes an esoteric form of entertainment whose primary purpose is to keep viewers glued to a particular channel.

Let me give you an example.

At my current work place, there is a television tuned perpetually to FOX and another one tuned always to CNN. Over the past week, these channels have spent, it seems, almost their entire broadcast time covering the situation in the Middle East and the idiot college student with his pipe bombs. Now, since I have work to do, I don't watch these sets continuously, but during those odd moments when my eye has wandered to these screens over the past couple of weeks, I have seen no coverage of the election in France, and I have seen no coverage of the assassination of Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands.

I did, however, notice that at least an hour was devoted earlier this week covering high-speed car chases (live) in Los Angeles.

What's even more indicative of the shallowness of broadcast news is the movement away from telling the viewer what happened, toward some kind of ersatz value-added philosophy that entails telling the viewer why it's important. In this regard, news ceases being news, and becomes simply propaganda, but that's a whole different rant.

Cheers...