You and I keep hearing them say it but is it true or MOOT?
One of most spoken criticisms of news organizations is that they only braze the news and do not give enough details to keep the public informed or as much as we would like them to.
They say they do not have the time to do the depth in the stories that they would like to do. Having taken a step back from this and look at it from a far perspective,
I say HOGWASH! (that is a kind word for bullshit).
For the last 20 years the time a local TV station spends on local news is up 300%. It was as I remember it, in the early 80’s 30 min for local news and 30 min for national (network) news. Today we have on most local TV stations, 90 min of local news and I have 1 showing 2 full hours plus the 30 min of National Network news and then 30 to 60 min of Entertainment News.
Problem here is they repeat the same news over and over again. These same stations could and would argue that the attention span for local news is 30 min or that they do not have enough advertisers to pay for that extended depth of news. I say again Hogwash !
They (Newspapers and Television) should have learned a great deal from the kind of stuff Ted Turner put together from their error filled ways. What I mean by that is that Mr Turner created a mega business model from the idea that news could be more in depth and profitable and 24 hours with the creation of CNN. Of course you would need to have cable or satellite to watch this and at the time he made that a profitable News organization and could not yet be viewed by 50% of homes in the US. This proves there was a void and money could be made while expanding services to the public.
Catching the business as usual media off guard in a lesson they still have not learned from.
Profit, Profits and more Profits !
Sorry to say that even Ted Turner has got the shaft from the model he created from his ever expanding merger activity and the profit model is back to normal squeezing every ounce of money from every news organization of cable news networks in general to better match what we see in the same stuff that is/has killed the newspaper business.
Is it news or blog….
1st make no mistake that this website is a BLOG (that is short for web log) . Fox news like most is more entertainment than news. In fact I would go as far as calling the O’Reilly report a video blog just like Rush Limbaugh is an audio blog. Anyone taking anything from these shows as news should only spend a day looking up the facts of one program online (not using links from their webs), that is if you did not know better before hand.
I say this most pointedly as I have for years listened to audio clips Rush would play of folks he would be trashing that I knew what the words to the speech before and after the clip was, so I was absolute about the out-of-context claims before they were even made. Hence I would ask myself, is he really aloud to do this? Yes it is entertainment not journalism as even Rush has answered himself on several occasions.
Oh.. I do listen to these kinds of programs once in a while… I like to know just how the sheep are being lead into the coral so that I may keep grazing.
I wonder just how far this garbage can go before someone crosses the line so bad that it creates riots and we have to have that free speech talk again and yes I would defend their right to free speech but not on public airwaves, hence they have all ready one-up me there as most are on un-regulated cable and taken the all the real entertainment content with them to ensure cable is free to do as it wishes with all the real profits.
My Solution…
Do not allow news organizations to have a corporate charter. Only a Co-Operative charter would work for all sides here.
Any media company or co=op that used the term “NEWS” to describe themselves could be challenged in court to be factual in their content of “NEWS”.
What? Don’t believe that? Well PBS does a fine job bringing you such great programming as FrontLine, Nova, Bill Moyers and my favorite, Charlie Rose.
In fact Bill Moyers may be one of the last great Journalist. Look him up on YouTube as there is plenty posted.
Blogs are not news and the Internet is full of them and most of them are full of shit. They are a way to convey opinion for anyone to read.
You can not rate a blog by how many readers. If 100k folks read it every day, it does not make what is said any more true. But it seems to be a new standard as I see Bloggers speaking as some kind of experts on national news media. When I see this on shows I previously had some regard for, it strips all of it away to the point I ask, Who is running this show anyway? Please tell me the guy who was to be here was killed in a plane or car crash as you are making a blogger a panel expert? What is next, Obama asks Rush Limbuagh or Glen Beck for some facts on the country?
Looking all this in the face, it scares me as soon everyone will be looking for real news and it will be hard to recognize it as most will just be telling us what we want to believe and quite possibly in the interest of corporate profits as they drive the content….. oh… is that time now….
I only hope to see investigative reporting stay alive with me as it may be the only thing that keeps me and you alive.