Fancy yourself a free-thinker? I’m sure most of us do consider ourselves to be those of independent thoughts and actions, but how much of what we do or believe is actually based on what we’re thinking?
Alright’where is the crazy sports reporter going with this one, you might ask. What I’m asking is, how much stock do we take in ‘real? news? At the community paper level, we write about everything happening in your area. The market research we use to figure out the things we cover – did it happen in the Clarkston area?
Television ‘news? coverage is much more broad and less in touch with its viewers.
This leads me to a question posed in JRN 200 at Oakland University (and likely many others), an introductory journalism course. ‘What is news??
I ask this because a lot of what we read and see today, especially viewing TV news, isn’t really news or important to anyone’s well-being.
When Anna Nicole Smith passed away, we didn’t know for months. Oh, that’s right. We were right there every step of the way, through the morgue and the ‘Who’s the Baby-Daddy? proceedings following her death.
We like our celebrity news, but this news spilled over into the ‘real? news. People criticize how the Iraq war has been pushed to the back pages of the paper and only moved up if something terrible happens. The news is laid out based on what they think you will enjoy. They obviously think you care more about a former stripper, Playboy model, than you do about the conflict in Iraq. Are they wrong?
My guess is that we dote so much time and energy into our actors/actresses and favorite musicians to get away from the harsh realities of the world. It’s a big business.
Back to the TV news, the biggest culprit is an ‘Agenda-setting theory.? I must not have noticed, but until the past few years, I considered the boob tube a good source for my news needs. As I got older, I much prefer papers.
Television puts such an emphasis on everything and turns many ‘news? items into a Doomsday scenario that has steadily pushed me away.
I will admit I like what Channel 7 investigator Steve Wilson does, watching out for taxpayers and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s expenses. However, the way he goes about tracking the mayor to different locales and poking a mic up the guy’s nose, that’s too much. You can be an investigator and not be a jerk. He has that stereotypical, pushy reporter persona that gives us a bad name.
My other big complaint with TV news is their lack of originality. Pick up The Oakland Press or The Detroit Free Press in the morning and then watch the TV news at night. How many news stories originating form the pressed pages end up on TV as an exclusive?
Extra extra, read all about it. Thanks for sticking to your guns and reading real news with us and if the other stuff doesn’t seem important, it’s not just you, it’s probably not all that consequential.