Useless news receives unwarranted attention
Absurd stories precede influential issues
Derrick Skaug
The Daily Evergreen
Published: 02/20/2009
My hopeful friends and I watched each major news network call the election one-by-one in favor of Barack Obama. Then we flipped to CNN’s “Headline News.” The news networks seemed to be doing a terrific job covering the 2008 election, probably because of its historical importance. On “Headline News,” Nancy Grace was talking about the election, in a sense. Not about who had, moments ago, been announced the winner, but instead about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin meeting actress Tina Fey. She ignored the election.
“Headline News” is a joke. The tragic story of Caylee Anthony, who was abducted in June has been covered non-stop by Nancy Grace. The coverage of Caylee has slowly weaned away with the memorial of the girl. But another girl who has gone missing just recently – Haleigh Cummings in Florida – has stolen the show’s limelight.
While both of these girls’ stories are tragic, these situations are far from rare. According to the Department of Justice, a child is reported missing or abducted every 40 seconds in the U.S. That equals more than 2,000 children per day or 800,000 per year.
Caylee and Haleigh’s stories have somehow caught the interest of the networks as ratings boosters and in turn have became national sideshows. In fact, in the middle of writing this article, I turned the TV to “Headline News” to find its top three stories to be: Haleigh, Caylee and a chimpanzee (the one from Connecticut that mauled someone).
Thursday, after President Obama’s press conference, Fox News immediately cut to the Haleigh kidnapping case to report that a sex offender who missed curfew near Haleigh’s house had been arrested. MSNBC also covered Haleigh. CNN covered the chimpanzee story as well as. According to the New York Post, nearly every single major paper in New York covered the chimpanzee, except the New York Times.
When news broke that Alex Rodriguez used steroids, the mainstream media went berserk. A baseball player got caught using steroids! It seems like a no-brainier to me – Major League Baseball has been infamous for performance enhancing drug usage.
A picture of Michael Phelps using a bong surfaced indicating that he probably smoked marijuana. Forty percent of Americans have used marijuana, according to the National Institute On Drug Abuse. Apparently it is only a big deal that this one person broke the law because they are a celebrity, though hundreds of millions of other Americans have broken the same law.
The “octo-mom” is the most obvious example of the media gone crazy over something that does not matter. A single mother had octuplets. It was probably a bad decision, and she will have to live with it. If she can not provide for these children, they will be taken away. That is the end of the story. Yet she is on the TV every single day. The media has speculated on whether she had lip implants and if she is obsessed with Angelina Jolie. Reality check: no one cares.
Or at least they shouldn’t.
Every single one of these stories are pointless and none of them affect Americans on a day-to-day basis. Each story is a sideshow that offers no solutions. Very rarely do the reporters address the causes of the problems. They accepted Phelps’ and A-Rod’s excuses of youth and stupidity for their dabbles in two very different types of banned substances.
There were no calls for stricter regulation of exotic animals after the chimp assault. The media worried about the hows of the child abduction but not the whys. The media should ask why disturbed individuals abduct children. The media should ask why we are not doing more to prevent these problems? But most importantly, we should ask why we are eating the gruel the media feeds us.
If we do not pay attention to the meaningless stories then the media won’t either.
There is a reason why news media is going broke. They are worthless.
I generally agree with this blog all though I think you miss the significance of the octomom. People are furious about her (and her Doctor's) irresponsible behavior because as TAXPAYERS they know they are going to get stuck paying the tab. And California taxpayers in their bankrupt state have enough to worry about without octomom making things worse. I think the coverage has served a useful purpose for society of attaching a lot of shame to her disgusting behavior.
The main reason 24 hour cable shows love these shows is that they are CHEAP. They don't cost much to produce. It does not take a big investigative staff to uncover details and try to make a complex issue understandable. They put a pretty bimbo on the air and she records 20 minutes of sound bytes and they play them over and over.