Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Deadly Rampage and No Loss for Words

Alessandra Stanley
The New York Times
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
The Story
The Summary: Amateur reporters had a major part in reporting yesterday's tragedies.

News has changed. We used to look to strong men to give us the hard facts about recent events (Edward R. Murrow, Peter Jennings, Walter Cronkite) but times they are a changin'. Women have become a staple in today's news reporting. Katie Couric is the first woman to host the evening news for a network station solo (both Barbra Walters and Connie Chung had co-hosted in the past). But the news has also become more emotional, and more fluff lately.

I don't think that its because of women, but because of the 24-hour news cycle. They created the news networks that never went off the air. There wasn't enough hard news to fill 24 hours (or even 16... with replays during the night time) Fluff worked its way into hard news, and ratings went up for those peices. Because of this you have almost 2 months of air dedicated to the Anna Nicole Smith story. If you search Time magazine's archives between August 1st, 1962 and September 1st, 1962 you find eight stories mentioning Marilyn Monroe's name. Not neccessarily about her, but mentioning her name. Her picture wasn't even on the cover of the magazine containing her obituary. (She died August 5th, 1962)

Compare that to the hours dedicated to Anna Nicole Smith on networks such as CNN and FOXNEWS. Everyone paralelled their lives, but the news coverage of their deaths was not.

Truly hard news has become a thing of the past. Even with yesterday's tragedy, we must put every thing in an emotional, personal light. Why can't we have facts like we used to. Human interest stories have run the news for far too long.

I'm not saying there isn't a human side to every story, because there is. But hours after is not the time to show it. Today was far to soon to be interviewing victims, yet there were interviews on TV today. And there is one photo they keep showing and I wish they wouldn't. A guy is a bloody mess as they carry him off the scene. I hate it. Just stop showing it, or at least give us a warning to look away.

I agree with the article. This is a time that America should be speechless... yet no one can shut the fuck up.

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