News Judgment — or Lack Thereof. I turned to CNN Headline News this afternoon to see if there was any current story I'd like to comment on here, but the half-hour summary that cable channel is supposed to carry has been pre-empted for "Breaking News", about a fire in a residential building on Manhattan's East Side apparently caused by a helicopter crashing into it. I then checked Fox News Channel, CNN (or perhaps I should say "CNN1", since CNN has apparently decided to destroy Headline News and render it into CNN2, with long-form reports taking over ever more of Headline News's schedule), MSNBC, and CNBC, all with the same result. Every single domestic cable news channel is focused on one story, on which, by the way, they have almost no information. That's insane.
+
If you don't know what's happening, go to other stories while your reporters find out, then return to the story when you know what you're talking about. What has happened to news judgment in this country?
+
The whole world does not come screeching to a halt because a helicopter crashes in Manhattan or a police chase is happening in California. We don't need to watch flames and smoke, or vehicles moving on a highway. That's not news. That's not information. Viewers don't need to follow such things in real time. The media do. Let the media tend to that and, in due course, tell us what happened, when you really know. In the interim, let us hear what else is happening.
+
I am getting very tired of media monomania.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,754 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:08 PM