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-- Should U.S. news change?
Should U.S. news change?
Do u guyz think the US media should include more international events in there coverage??? Most of the news crops now dont really report on international events. Its always the same 2-3 things. Like Iraq vs USA/Jews vs Arabs ect. WHAT MAKES MATTERS WAY WORSE is that the media tends to focus on stupid drama/hype stories like OJ/Tonia Harding/Bush sex life ect. This is fine but when it overrides major world events it kinda makes me wonder whats up. A good example of this would be what happened in 1994. The US was talking about OJ and Tonia Harding 25/8. Meanwhile in Rwanda 1 million people were murdered and nobody really did anything about it. In fact the news coverage was very light. DID ANY OF U HEAR ABOUT THIS WHILE IT WAS HAPPENING????? I know it was a while ago but u get the point.
Link for the Rwanda issue/ http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0613/p09s02-coop.html
Heh, I was always wondering how come I missed the whole Rwanda issue. Now that I think of it, I lived in the states for 2 years, and that was right about that time. I remember hearing about OJ all the time, but I never noticed anything on news which was related to Rwanda.
- Indeed, my local news are all about local unless a BUILDING with like 100 people burn on somewhere in the Nation or a train de-rails.. but they dont show about each news more then 20 secs or so.. most 30..I think they should do more coverage, and stop leaving the Americans ignorant with whats going around the world. I have to scavenge with the news .. not that it bothers me, but I do have to do the extra JOB to know whats up.
don't feel like it's only the US news that should change, because around the world it's the same deal. no longer are news agencies, especially the television networks, putting out hard news with raw facts for its viewers. why? because it simply doesnt 'sell' as much as soft news, or 'infotainment'. as you know everything is about money nowadays, for television its money are its viewers, in the newspaper its money are the readers. the audiences are selfish people, common human characteristic, thus they in reality only give a shit about the news that affects them, or news that is sensationalistic and entertaining. a traditional television news presentation should address issues in the following order - international, national, local/state. however, the actual execution of news nowadays is more along the lines of sensationalistic, then national, then local/state, then international. the reason for this is, if they show boring international news about a country thousands of kilometres away at the start of a news bulletin, they know they are gonna lose viewers straight-away, because harsh as it may seem, nobody gives a goddam shit about a million rwandians dying. it doesnt affect them directly, or even indirectly, so why should they? the only reason you may see international news at the beginning of a bulletin is if it is sensationalistic. the only time you will see a major world event at the beginning of a bulletin is if it is 'shocking/surprising', and then the news agencies go into the other extreme of over coverage. it is because infotainment sells, that in a major world event, such as 9/11, the news agencies and their affiliate television stations and subsequent network shows will milk the story/incident to its fullest extent to get maximum viewers, which in turn leads to maximum dollar.
there are some news agencies/networks that still cover the news the traditional, hard, raw way. most of these, especially tv, are government operated/funded (public service tv) and thus are not relying on large viewer/reader base to fund their work.
hrm, bit too long, bit too incoherant, but yeah. it's all about the dollar these days.
end.
There was news coverage of Rwanda you just had to pay attention 
. I think it was right after the whole Somalia mess and the US wasn't too keen on providing humanitarian aid or peacekeeping at that time. Anyway I agree that US news channels need to be revamped. We definetely need to have a public news channel like bbc. Don't see that happening anytime soon though ...
i think i understand what sifntj0r was saying...(somewhat)
it is a matter of sales, whether it should be or not. you can find all the news you could ever want in the US, you just can sit there and stare at a TV screen without caring.
one interesting fact ive noticed goes between the news in Detroit Michigan, where i go to school, and Denver Colorado, where im from. In Detroit, where everything went to hell in a handbasket after the second world war, to this day you see all the shootings, stabbings, crimes and arrests that have happened everyday on the prime time news. Detroit isnt an uplifting place, but the focus on it worries me. People seeing this would assume that theres an abnormally high crime rate there, and while theres a fair bit- any big city could go on and on about crime and it wouldnt sound any better.
in Denver tho, this 'crime time' found in Detroit is filled with cushy stories about newborns in the zoo and other pandering crap. its a fair bit less depressing tho - but that doesnt mean its any better.
in discussing everything about the US its hard for many people that dont live there to fully understand the difficulty and issues surround media coverage and a basic understanding of the outside world. its not that that isnt important, its just that the US is so large, it becomes difficult to fairly cover all important AND interesting topics in a short news broadcast. and when you have a country of 300 million people separated from most other continents but a vast distance, its even more difficult to focus on what is important.
overall i think the intrest of being entertained often outweighs the caring aspect tho. but its still important to note that while important things are happening in Europe (esp to people from European countries, and elsewhere) theres a shitload of other stuff happening in the entire world that NOBODY hears about. name a major problem in Zimbabwe right now besides AIDS and maybe racism or conservation of the environment...there HAS to be other issues, but its a matter of proximity and importance to the people involved.
as the world gets smaller due to the internet and globalization, everyone expects everyone to know more about everything - the truth is that it isnt necessarily as easy as that|
Hmmm good post biznology ... if you think about it, bbc news coverage of the US is actually pretty abysmal. CNN is pretty crappy too with regards to a complete coverage of what's happening in the US. It does divide the US into regions and gives further coverage there but even so it's not all that great. Essentially there is a hour each night devoted to world news. And then that coverage mostly deals in topics revolving around the middle east and europe. I guess it just depends on geography. I mean of course bbc is going to have a lot more european news coverage because it's a european news agency ... how much news coverage does it devote to asia?
what concearns me more is how hard it is to find news that is actually objective, isnt that the point of the news?? The media these days makes me sick, making everything as spectacular as possible and telling you what you should think about it, hence controling the ignorant masses. They thrive on disaster and hate, the type that would get a meteor to hit the earth just so the could cover the story.
The parochialism of American news is due to both cultural norms (American's think they're the center of the universe and thus don't bother to learn other languages, read, etc.) and capitalist norms (the 'news as a function of selling entertainment' argument made above).
This second part is crucial, for the US media are alone in the world in having this entertainment-based component to distributing information--although this, too, is beginning to change as other countries adopt the US model.
Positing news as entertainment reduces newspersons to the role of brainless pundit/talking head. Anyone who follows news in the US knows that investigative news has been completely subsumed by the hollywood-ish cult-of-personality that surrounds people like Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews. Screaming and diarrhea of the mouth hence replace substantive debate.
The pundit culture also introduces the problem of concision. In a half-hour show moderated by these t.v. lunatics, real discussion is impossible to flourish because complex ideas that go against the prevailing wisdom take time to explain. What happens is everyone goes on the air and simply regurgates conventional pieties (Saddam is bad, markets are good) while obscuring the real issues. The few times that real thinkers are allowed to express contrary or radical ideas they sound ridiculous because two-and-a-half minute segments are simply not enough time to turn two hundred years of indoctrination on its head.
What ultimately happens is an uniformed citizenry stays uniformed while the spectrum of debate narrows such that conservative militarists like Ariel Sharon or Colin Powell are presented as moderate voices of reason.
Broad and substantive levels of debate are a fundamenatal pre-requisite of representative government. When no real debate exists, we start arresting people for wearing pro-peace t-shirts in malls and we start eating freedom toast and freedom-kissing our significant others.
While I do read the NYT every day, I choose to get my serious and thought-provoking news from the alternative press and, to a lesser degree, the BBC, CBC, and the Australian news.
The media's sensationalism is unfortunate, but is brought about by societal circumstances rather than being a self-manifesting phenomenon. To simply suggest that the news change is ludicrous - for it is those aspects of society which have brought about this problem that much change before any real progress may be made.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Arbiter To simply suggest that the news change is ludicrous - for it is those aspects of society which have brought about this problem that much change before any real progress may be made. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Mental Exodus If u changed the news wouldnt it effect these aspects? Or is this a non reversal linear model of causality. |
Our television networks and large-circulation newspapers identify themselves as instruments of the American government rather than as witnesses beholden to the American people. They've been packing their safari hats from the moment U.S. troops were sent over to the Persian Gulf.
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