Cable News needs to get back to the News

Last week we had another tragic massacre at a school. This time it was a deranged young man for no readily apparent reason opening fire on a lecture hall filled with students at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb Illinois.

When the fog from this tragedy cleared, a half-dozen people were dead with eighteen more wounded.

Normally such an event would at least take equal billing with the latest on Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan or another rehash of the Anna Nichole Smith saga. Not this time.

To be sure on some cable news networks, including CNN, which gave it a fifteen minute segment, the story was relayed but on the big boys, MSNBC and Fox News it only seemed to deserve a little stringer under the telecast. No doubt produced locally, it was as if another thunderstorm was headed someone’s way. At the breaks Fox Newscasters told a quick account of what had happened but then programming went right back to something more fitting a celebrity gossip channel than the biggest name in cable news.

On Fox News when the Northern Illinois press conference was going on Bill O’Reilly was busy chastising Jane Fonda for using a filthy word in an NBC interview. O’Reilly who never passes on any opportunity to fairly and with great balance chew on NBC or anything liberal thought this was more important than another school massacre. He also has to spend some time every evening reminding viewers that he is the top dog ratings wise. I find his grasp on this position so imperative to his personality that if he ever slipped to number two, I wouldn’t be surprised if he popped like a balloon.

On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, decided a continual harangue on the government’s use of water boarding deserved a time slot more than Northern Illinois University. Olbermann, arguably the best sports commentator ESPN ever had, has taken water boarding to such a level of coverage that one would think it is an Olympic summer sport. He is an extremely intelligent man. He needs to know when he has told a story, retold a story and then move on. Otherwise he will end up being another Lou (The illegal immigration show) Dobbs. Olbermann also needs to know that commentaries should last two or three minutes and not an entire segment. He’s a news guy. He should know the two minute rule to keeping a reader or listener’s attention is a time-honored and proven maxim.

What really made the evening strange is that the one program that actually covered the disaster in some detail was CNBC. Nancy (I never met a dumb story I couldn’t drive into the ground) Grace, actually served justice to this tale of another sick person with guns in his hands affecting the lives of so many families.

I often criticize news media for taking a tragedy and driving it into the ground. Often slayings or disasters get so much air time that anchor persons spend time commenting on a recap with a news reporter going on live to say there is nothing new to report. This cycle then continues for an entire night, or week or month depending on the fancy of the news producers.

Without a doubt, in the ensuing days there was coverage by all the news outlets but nothing compared to most headline stories. I wonder why the Northern Illinois tragedy didn’t get the coverage of other school slayings. Has cable news decided to back off on school slayings? If so you think they would tell us this is their new position.

As we are filled with continuous stories of incredibly dumb celebrities getting drunk or strung out on drugs or losing their children I wonder if we are watching the news anymore. Or are we just all standing around an electronic fence passing around gossip that really has nothing to do with anything important.

Comment by Creative^(51,639) (81 days 6 hours ago.)