Framing the Election
Ok, this is not going to be a story on Liberal Bias in the media, or even Conservative Bias in the media. Its a story about how the media frames stories like the upcoming presidential election, and when I say upcoming I mean 2 years away still, for ratings and advertisement revenue.
I was watching either Eyewitness News or Action News on Monday, I can't remember which, though I know for dang sure it was not NBC10, they are crap. Anyway, the news was doing a story on the recently released fundraising totals for the upcoming primaries. They used a bar graph to display the totals. Hillary was first on the graph, as she should have been with 26 million raised. Now, the first little blip on the graph struck me next, listing Romney's 23 million dollar total. Ok, I am thinking, maybe they are going in numerical order. Next is Giuliani with his 15, bolstering my theory.
But next on the graph is McCain and his 12.5 mill, story over, on to the next story. Now, waiiitttt one darn minute. If this graph was going to be numerically correct, Edwards would be listed at 14 million before McCain. Or they should have done another graph telling us the Republicans and then the Democratic totals.
But, since Hillary has been declared the president in waiting on the Democratic side, she is the only one that gets the pub on local news. They really have not started running yet and still Hillary gets all the spotlight, because she is who she is. So, whatever news station it was has already painted the election to be a 4 person race, though I will give them the fact that Obama would have made this graph if he released his total.
So, people who may have good messages and good ideas right now are being drowned out, unless you watch the cable news and you can not get a straight thoughtful news story on cable news until you watch the evening shows.
Oh and one more little problem, Joe Biden is the senator of Delaware. We are in the Delaware Valley. It would have been nice if they just made a side mention of the local senator running for president, even if his totals had to be disappointing.
So local news has become news for dummies.
3 comments:
Local news does a couple of things.
1. They promote upcoming network shows, either with a faux story or some hidden promo within something that looks like news.
2. They build ratings for the network news. Especially in February, May and November "Sweeps", when they trot out the YOUR HOUSE IS KILLING YOU stories to get you to tune in. The numbers drive their ad budget and rates for ads.
It has degenerated into "News for Dummies" over the past 5 to 10 years. Why else would the weather get top billing?
The sad part is, that not everyone picked up what you picked up, and they buy it as fact.
I only watch local news by accident. I've never understood the lure of Action News, and wonder what would happen if they switched channels, liek 3 and 10 did a while ago. Would people tune in to channel 6 out of habit or follow Action News to channel 10?
It is too often the case that the news decides what the news is.
Unfortunate.
It sucks. It's totally bummed me out lately. Faux news (like when there's a big story about Starbucks having a new coffee flavor? Hello, ADVERTISING!) and incomplete news and slanted news...Oh, it so gets my blood boiling.
Used to be a time you could really sit down and find out what the hell was going on in your world. Now, you have to search, sift, and STILL take it all with a grain of salt.
Don Henley's Dirty Laundry tune from the 80's is that much more relevant in the 21st century...
Post a Comment