What's Wrong With the TV News

MBCook writes "Technology Review has a fantastic seven page piece titled "You Don't Understand Our Audience" by former Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry. In it he discusses how NBC (and the networks at large) has missed and wasted opportunities brought by the Internet; and how they work to hard to get viewers at the expense of actual news. The story describes various events such as turning down a report on who al-Qaeda is for a reality show about firefighters, having to tie a story about a radical student group into American Dreams, and the failure to cover events like Kurt Cobain suicide (except as an Andy Rooney complaint piece)."

Comments

Re:Who the hell is

[rovingeyes]

Bingo! Exactly my point. Who the fuck gives a rats ass about a stoner singer who had "issues" - big fuckin' deal. Its not like Cobain was a phenomenal singer. He can hardly sing. Granted he is way better than Britney, still does not warrant to be featured story. I bet if he died now, CNN would just dedicate a week for him. Sad indeed.

Re:Who the hell is

[LWATCDR]

I wasn't a fan of Kurt Cobain but I knew that he died and how. So since I found out I think they did cover that well.
I developed a real dislike for the news service back when I was about four or five when they refused to not interrupt soap operas to cover the later Apollo missions.
So I don't think that news coverage was ever that great.
The real problem is when the Democratic congress dropped the "equal time" law. At the time they felt that the news service was slanted in their favor so they wanted to make the best of it. Of course they where not ready for talk radio and the extreme right.
What we have now is so many news sources "I will not call them services" that everybody can find someone that will tell you exactly what you want to hear. We will tend to think they are the "most honest" news source. In fact it tends to be the one that just matches our bias!

I wish I knew the solution.