Re: Media overkill...

[Robert Jackson <High.Seas@breezy.com>]

MikeHemeon wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 5/16/98 9:05:27 PM Central Daylight Time,
> dlh@donnahalper.com writes:
> 
> << My problem is that celebrity news is lazy journalism-- it's
>  easier to do interviews with fans of Seinfeld or people who knew Frank
>  Sinatra than ....(sippeth)
> 
>...and Mike said:
> They do stories on what the idiot population wants. Unforunately, that is
> where the majority have their heads these days. MSNBC's highest ever rated
> program?? Sonny Bono's Funeral.
> 
> Mike
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And the term "stories" is what we have...and not the news.
I think it has been the network TV media itself that has been 
slowly "defining" what news stories will "look like" over time - 
far more social and entertainment commentary.

Donna called it lazy journalism and soft news - it's also cheap stuff.
I can imagine the executives at the major networks over the past 20 
years admonishing their people to keep travel expenses down,"...go
across town for some fluff - don't cross the Atlantic!..."

As typified in the endless "magazine segments" on the network 
newscasts; the failure to go get the real news has led to this
pabulum being spoon-fed to a huge American audience that is born 
and bred in the tradition of Video.

The danger is that this tendency towards "provincialism" will become 
the norm - a kind of turning inward, and a narrow, agenda-filled 
view of our world.


Bob J.
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