The local news has got to one of the worst forms of mass-media currently in existence. They exist only to regurgitate actual news that everyone can read on the internet. However, this actual news only takes a few moments of their time slots, so they have to find news to continue to sell advertising and stay in business. So they muckrake, produce inane human interest stories, and stretch the truth to make it seem like what they do have is significantly more important than it actually is.
That's right, the local news is not a public service. It's a business. Their business is selling advertising time by using "news" as a draw. Of course news like this is biased! The producers who decide WHAT makes it on the air are looking for stories that will cause viewers to tune in. One of the strongest human emotions is fear, so the local news focuses on the negative and scares people into watching. This was referred to as "pop nihilism" somewhere-and that's a pretty accurate way to describe it. Throughout the day, the news runs short teaser ads saying things like "is the end of the world is coming? tune in at 10 to find out!". Of course the end of the world is not coming...they just want to scare you into thinking it might so they can expose you to more ads.
If the producers behind the news actually cared about people instead of themselves, they'd run more positive stories and reassure people that everything will be okay instead of terrorizing them. There are lots of positive things that happen every day....look at www.happynews.com for some great examples.
As a tame example, the local news has been predicting a bad storm here in Denver for a few days. Even through last night, kusa.com was still predicting 12-15 inches of snow by this morning. Of course in reality, there was no snow. Not a flake. Now they have a "whoops folks! the storm missed us!" story on their home page. Acting like a huge storm was coming certainly brought more viewers to both their website and their television broadcasts, increasing their exposure and making their advertising slots more valuable. I refuse to believe that in 2007, meteorological technology is not advanced enough to have foreseen this lack of storm hitting Denver. But they don't care...they certainly got a ton of viewers watching to be filled in on the details of this "massive storm".
The producers of local news shows do not care about you. They do not care if they terrorize the public. They care about themselves. I, for one, vow to not watch the news and not support the businesses of advertisers who market during the news.
I hope you join me in my crusade to end this form of broadcast terrorism.
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