For some reason I've noticed that every time I watch the evening news on one of the networks they have a story about weather. Floods, snow, hurricanes, clouds, it's all they seem to care about.
I think this is for a few reasons.
1. It's Apolitical. This is the biggest and most bothersome reason that the networks love weather stories. CBS, NBC, and ABC are so worried about being biased that they love a juicy blizzard story that has no political sides at all. Rather than covering pressing issues or societal problems, it's a safe bet that weather is not going to illicit a lot of angry e-mail.
2. It's cheap and visually appealing. This is probably even a bigger reason. To cover a blizzard all you really need is the internet, a cameraman, and one guy willing to stand out in the storm and read the news with dramatic weather behind him.
The reason this trend is bothersome to me is not only that these stories are boring, (which they always are), and not just that they are local or regional stories and not national news (who in New York cares about the weather in Tulsa and Visa versa), but because for every story about weather that's one more big story they don't cover. One more Coup of a foreign state, one new controversial law, one new scientific study that gets ignored in favor of weather.
Shape up Network News and start covering what really matters. I'm going to go to my window and yell "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." But first I'm going to check the weather to see if I should put on a sweater.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Ha! Yes, great closing sentence! take THAT... weather! Still, I wish a tornado would land on Bill O'Reilly's head.
Post a Comment