Damn good editorial by the Salt Lake Tribune... ___________ Police have determined that a young woman reported missing a couple of weeks ago was murdered. They say her husband did it. Even the suspect's family says he has confessed. He is in jail. Hundreds of volunteers who were scouring the foothills and putting up posters have been thanked and sent home. Police are left to dig through the local landfill. Incessant national media attention no longer serves any purpose. Unlike the Elizabeth Smart case, there is no reason to hope that Lori Hacking will be spotted at a truck stop in North Platte, or a trailer park in Yakima, no point in spreading the all-points bulletin to everyone with a television set and a cell phone. So, with all due respect and thanks, we have a simple message to the national media paratroops who have parachuted into Salt Lake City for another juicy story on a missing white woman: Go away. This is a local story, involving the pain of local people, investigated and prosecuted by local officials and thoroughly covered by the local media. Further reporting of this story for any other audience, beyond short updates, is a waste of videotape, ink and, most of all, time. When this story is all over it might, in the hands of a perceptive writer, make a good magazine article. But it really appears no different than the sad tales of hundreds of other women who, each year, are killed by those they trusted the most. For Fox News, MSNBC and, most disappointing of all, CNN - the Network of Record - to be spending so much time hashing, rehashing and, most of all, speculating on the gory details of this single case is an excellent example of what's wrong with the mass media today. Every minute spent by Larry King or Fox News on Lori Hacking or Laci Peterson is a minute they don't spend on health care, education, environmental quality, national security, the economy or other real issues that should be the center of public attention, especially in an election year. A nation full of people who know more about Scott Peterson's defense strategy than they do about Donald Rumsfeld's is not a nation that shows much ability to govern itself. Local folks have a right and a duty to look over the shoulder of their criminal justice system as it does its job. Reporters from other media outlets can and should be available to backstop the locals whenever there is reason to believe that those closest to the story were seduced into joining either a lynch mob or a whitewash. But for so much of the talent, time and resources of our worldwide media to be spent on a story of strictly local importance displays no courage and little imagination. Instead, it is a symptom of a perverse laziness on the part of both the media and its audience. So it's time for the circus to pack up and leave town. Don't worry. If anything happens, we'll let you know. http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2389371
I agree with that article. It's amazing to me how much the media has become so interesting in running a story into the ground. Watching these channels, it's as if there's no other news story happening in the world right now. It's almost wall-to-wall coverage of whatever the given story of the day is regardless of whether there's any news to report regarding the story or not. This is really an outgrowth of the O.J. Simpson coverage and has just ballooned and gotten worse since then. It's made cable news unwatchable for me.
Great piece, totally agree. Funny, I was going to start a thread about this topic today after eating lunch at the mall foodcourt where they had a huge TV blaring Fox News. I sometimes like to go and get info on how the S & P is doing etc. Well not today. Today was all Scott Peterson all the time. They had 4 different reporters giving 4 different interpretations of how a certain witness testimony could "break the case wide open". Just when I thought it was over, they move on......to the Hacking case. Listening to certain Fox News reporters talking about this case (along with the Hacking case) you can actually hear the excitement and exuberance in their voices. It's really quite bizarre. I really think they are getting off on it. I think all the cable news networks, Fox in particular, are trying to jam these stories down are throats whether we like it or not. I don't get it. Are people talking about these cases around the water cooler at work? Not where I work. Why do they assume this is such an intriguing case. With all due respect to the victims, there are no athletes involved, no Hollywood stars involved, no politicians involved. What makes these two cases different from the hundreds of other murder cases going on? This is an election year. There's a war in Iraq. There's a war in Afghanistan. Why do we have these 2 murder cases jammed down our throats every day? I'm glad I'm not alone in being pissed off about it.
Some really good points and lines. A nation full of people who know more about Scott Peterson's defense strategy than they do about Donald Rumsfeld's is not a nation that shows much ability to govern itself Every minute spent by Larry King or Fox News on Lori Hacking or Laci Peterson is a minute they don't spend on health care, education, environmental quality, national security, the economy or other real issues that should be the center of public attention, especially in an election year Amazing everyon in th D and D agrees, I wonder if the hangout crowd would, too. Only point I disagree with is its treatment of the local "news". I refer to it as "crime ,weather and sports". A friend of mine who worked at Channel 2 in Houston agrees that is what is should be called. A variation is when half the sports stories involve crime or drug use by athletes. Let's face it. The National Inquirer outsells the NY Times. Media is just about making money in this day and age.
Local news is unbearable and my wife and I have friends that are local reporters in major markets who laugh and agree when we say that.
Hey, I say it to my own who watches it with her Mom all the time. It's really just a Family Guy quote I stole.
I stopped allowing my son when he was about 9 years old to watch the local news. In a quite neighborhood I went to the convenience store. With no one around, after pumping gas I left my son in the car, the motor was off and the windows down, I kept an eye oh him as I put the 50 c down to buy a paper and as I came out he was running out of the car, scared. He claimed he might be "car jacked" I told him that was very rare. He told me "no". He saw it on the news all the time and therefore it must be "true". Even at that age he knew the difference between the fictionalized violence of say Schwartnegger movies and the "news".
Conspiracy Rock here is a copy of an old Robert Smiegel SNL clip called Conspiracy Rock which did a brilliant job of pointing out the dangers of media monopoly. The clip was so on the money that Lorne Michaels refused to air it again during SNL reruns telling New York Daily News that he "didn't think it worked comedically" Harry Shearer admitted that the reason the clip was cut was because "...Lorne wanted to continue working at 30 Rock." here are the lyrics http://snltranscripts.jt.org/97/97pfunhouse.phtml
Because the victims were moderately attractive women who came from families who owned videocameras. Usually, the existence of a preponderance of video footage of a victim is the largest determining factor in how much airplay a crime gets. Of the huge number of child-abuse cases that happen in the U.S., the only cases you'll hear mentioned on the national news are; A.) Those that involve a celebrity/politician/etc.,. or, B.) Those that have actual video footage of the abuse (from a Wal-Mart security cam, or a Nanny cam, or some such thing). I think the reason celebrity/political crimes get so much coverage is, along with the obvious reasons, because there is usually a huge amount of video of celebrities/politicians already at media disposal. Also, a "moderately attractive" victim means the victims are sympathetic characters to the average viewer without being intimidating, and the video footage means we can see (repeatedly) how they were "just like us." A TV show must have likeable characters if it is to attract viewers. CNN/FOXnews/et.al., are catering to the same audience that spends all day watching soap operas, and are raking in the advertising bucks because of that strategy. (Pay attention to how the commercials change during one of those four-hour Peterson/Hacking video splurges. It's also well-known by advertisers that women are often the main financial decision-makers in a family household.) Television news is not your friend.
The news media, cable news networks in particular, have gotten to a point where they seem to be parodying The Daily Show rather than the opposite. It's depressing.
You would think that with so many news outlets -- local, national, television, print, radio and internet -- competing for advertising dollars, that at least one media outlet would go deeper for stories. But instead of challenging each other to investigate real issues, they continue to dredge the kiddie pool for ideas. It's pretty damn insulting. I guess when most of the media are owned by a handful of corporations with very specific agendas, news coverage shrinks to weather, shark bites and Lori Hacking. It's easier and cheaper that way, and they don't risk losing their sponsors.
24 hour news cycle. Gotta fill all those hours with something. I don't watch cable news, not even Fox, because of it.
