Media Fail
Remember Tiger Woods and his many sordid affairs? The media ate that up. It only took two weeks for our media sources to have “investigated,” found him guilty and hung him out to dry. Meanwhile, it has taken months for the media to “officially” report that former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards had a child out of wedlock, denied it…and did both while a major candidate in the 2008 race. Too, remember that it was the National Enquirer that broke the Edwards story wide open. The NATIONAL ENQUIRER. Not The New York Times, which had this profile about Cindy McCain in 2008, or the Washington Post, which had a front-page story about Governor McDonnell’s thesis from two decades or even Drudge, which only last week had a picture of Senate Majority Reid (D-NV) and a story about his alleged facelift as the leading story.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- our professional media has failed us. However, in the age of the Internet, we have zero excuses. Let’s hold the professional media responsible by using the free market choices we have via the Internet, TV, newspapers, radio and magazines to show them Michael Jackson, facelifts, the Balloon Boy and other non-stories won’t cut it anymore.
Real News Left Behind
It was 10:10 on Sunday evening, and I decided to see what the leading?news stories were on CNN?s and Fox?s respective websites. Having seen Yahoo News? top story being about Tiger Woods? car accident the other day, I suspected I knew what the answer was. Turns out, I was right. The stories were in spots designed to get major, first–or-second-glance attention.
Now, to be fair, Fox and CNN also had big stories about the police shooting (both), a woman who is helping women get mammograms (CNN), a story about AIDS guidelines (Fox) and Fox had its required “Support a Republican” story about Senator Lugar (R-IN) and his?thoughts about delaying health care reform until?”next year, the same way we put cap and trade and climate change, and talk now about the essentials: the war and money.” However, Fox had the Woods “story” on its top four list on its site, and CNN had it first on its “Latest News” list. (Oddly enough, MSNBC had the Woods “story” listed as third in its Sports section, and I actually missed it the first two times I scanned the page. MSNBC’s main section covered the police shootings, the economy, Afghanistan, Detroit’s economic needs, where investors are focusing this week and the Steelers-Ravens game. Not too bad for a liberal rag of a “news” source.)
Money drives news, as it should- news needs money to survive, after all- but once again our news is showing just how misplaced American priorities and dollars are. Stories that cover Honduras, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, China, the recession, the police shootings, health care reform efforts and other important news should be at the top of the list the vast majority of the time. Instead, they are pushed aside by non-news and entertainment.
This is an old rant, and says nothing new (except that MSNBC actually did a good job at something). Should those of us who care keep hammering at America’s lack of real world knowledge and news awareness, or are we wasting our time? Will we as a nation pull our heads out of *the clouds* and at least try to be aware of the world around us? Please?
