WCCO ended their evening broadcast tonight with a hard-hitting news-piece on the arrival of baby sea otters at the Minnesota Zoo.
Comfy news stories are used to finish broadcasts because ending on a lighter note helps maintain an audience. This is one of many signs that broadcasters, in a constant battle for ratings and advertising revenue, have lost track of their grand responsibility: the quality of the public sphere.
The RTNDA code of ethics says that "journalists should [. . .] guard against extended coverage of events or individuals that fails to significantly advance a story, place the event in context, or add to the public knowledge."
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
KARE 11 Wins Award
It was late Sunday when a romp through Lexis Nexis led me to a news-wire that said four Gannett television news programs had won RTNDA Edward R. Murrow awards. With the chagrin of a man-proven-wrong I considered the list, which began with this entry: "KARE-TV at Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN –[. . .] for '35W Bridge Collapse'."
I put the laptop down to think. After a couple days I decided it was my obligation to post the good with the bad, and I went to check and see if KARE 11 had reported their big win. They did, along with video of the coverage in question.
So with palms sweating as I type: kudos to you, KARE 11. If your Internet video technology wasn't so horrible, I might go into more detail about the coverage.
KARE 11 receives their award on October 13, during an official ceremony at RTNDA headquarters in New York City.
I put the laptop down to think. After a couple days I decided it was my obligation to post the good with the bad, and I went to check and see if KARE 11 had reported their big win. They did, along with video of the coverage in question.
So with palms sweating as I type: kudos to you, KARE 11. If your Internet video technology wasn't so horrible, I might go into more detail about the coverage.
KARE 11 receives their award on October 13, during an official ceremony at RTNDA headquarters in New York City.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Resurrection
I'm days away from quitting my job and starting out on my own as a freelance reporter. As I look forward to unemployment, I'm thinking this abandoned shed of a blog might have been worth more than I gave it credit for.
The problems I had with it were obvious to me after the second post. The first and most glaring problem with a blog like this: redundancy. TV news programs (especially the local ones) break ethical guidelines often because its policy to do so. Of course Fox 9 has an American Idol beat reporter. How could they avoid it? They're just part of a grand-scale umbrella extension of Fox Inc., ran by Rupert Murdoch, the very man most responsible for destroying broadcast news industry.
If there could be a single enemy of public knowledge, it would be Murdoch. If the current news-media v. ownership struggle were compared to a Marvel comic-book, he and his junta (made up of other industry men, various conservative politicians, etc.) would be The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, with Murdoch as Magneto himself. An even more depressing fact: there is no team of X-Men dedicated to maintaining the quality of the public sphere, countering the malicious acts Murdoch and his Evil Mutants.
Another problem with this blog is my ineptitude, unavoidable because:
1. I'm lazy. Plain and simple. There was a six-month span of time a couple years back, during which I edited a school newspaper and was accordingly beholden to the many responsibilities of an editor. It was a great learning experience. I learned that my human inclination, shaped by eons of evolution, guides me away from taking on too much responsibility. I don't dare ponder the possible consequences of ignoring that inclination.
2. I don't have cable or TiVO. This means I have to pick and choose which broadcasts I watch, and catch the rest on internet postings. The result is an incomplete picture of the daily news-scape, which I feel is important picture to have for these postings. A complainer like myself needs to have a perfect idea of the thing he is upset with.
3. Watching local TV news every day is unbelievably depressing: gas prices going up, blacks killing whites, blacks killing blacks, gas prices going up, whites having to rent because they can't afford housing, squirrels water-skiing, etc. Metro news is limited crime reports, and suburban news is limited to self-absorbed babble. After watching this stuff every day for a couple weeks I start getting nausious at around 4:30, just before the evening broadcast begins.
The problems I had with it were obvious to me after the second post. The first and most glaring problem with a blog like this: redundancy. TV news programs (especially the local ones) break ethical guidelines often because its policy to do so. Of course Fox 9 has an American Idol beat reporter. How could they avoid it? They're just part of a grand-scale umbrella extension of Fox Inc., ran by Rupert Murdoch, the very man most responsible for destroying broadcast news industry.
If there could be a single enemy of public knowledge, it would be Murdoch. If the current news-media v. ownership struggle were compared to a Marvel comic-book, he and his junta (made up of other industry men, various conservative politicians, etc.) would be The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, with Murdoch as Magneto himself. An even more depressing fact: there is no team of X-Men dedicated to maintaining the quality of the public sphere, countering the malicious acts Murdoch and his Evil Mutants.
Another problem with this blog is my ineptitude, unavoidable because:
1. I'm lazy. Plain and simple. There was a six-month span of time a couple years back, during which I edited a school newspaper and was accordingly beholden to the many responsibilities of an editor. It was a great learning experience. I learned that my human inclination, shaped by eons of evolution, guides me away from taking on too much responsibility. I don't dare ponder the possible consequences of ignoring that inclination.
2. I don't have cable or TiVO. This means I have to pick and choose which broadcasts I watch, and catch the rest on internet postings. The result is an incomplete picture of the daily news-scape, which I feel is important picture to have for these postings. A complainer like myself needs to have a perfect idea of the thing he is upset with.
3. Watching local TV news every day is unbelievably depressing: gas prices going up, blacks killing whites, blacks killing blacks, gas prices going up, whites having to rent because they can't afford housing, squirrels water-skiing, etc. Metro news is limited crime reports, and suburban news is limited to self-absorbed babble. After watching this stuff every day for a couple weeks I start getting nausious at around 4:30, just before the evening broadcast begins.
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