Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Rally Non-Coverage: A Theory - For What It's Worth

I’ve received a number of emails from readers of the ‘Rally Against Palin’ posts below and the writers were consistent on one key question: With the many 24-hour news outlets on the air, why did the rally story itself take three days to hit the airwaves?

My theory, for what it’s worth, deals with the hourly and tri-hourly programming cycles. Think of ‘Headline News’ as an hourly programmed network, and how the top news is recycled every 15 to 20 minutes, or so. Using the same copy accompanied by the same video in the same sequence over and over.

As I see it (and I am not the news junky I was long ago, there is only so much monotone, bland delivery, so many imprecise catch phrases “the best political team on television” one person can take before their head implodes) regurgitating the preprogrammed tri-hourly cycle – repeating the same stories every 45 minutes or so – allowing for ‘breaking items’ and ‘updates’ on previously reported ones to be thrown into the mix for variety requires no effort on the part of reporters or news directors to actively change the cycle for about 24 to 36 hours. Copy changes so the teleprompter-reading talking heads have the real job. They’ve got to sell it as ‘fresh’ news.

Weekend News and The Situation Room are prime examples of this theory. I cannot comment on Fox Noise; I don’t have to watch, there’s this note from my doctor.

To be fair, this happens in a small way on radio; an example is NPR’s Morning Edition, as the 4-hour program is live only for the first two. The second two hours are taped replays that include the on-air gaffs made live during the first two. At least, there’s a completely new program the following morning.

Not so on the 24-hour news channels. They get maximum mileage out of audio and video by simply cutting and pasting ‘updates’ to those same – sometimes-inaccurate – stories.

The other thing about this particular story is that the rally organizers sent out press releases to all major outlets (as stated in the video) and it looks like not one chose to cover it, for whatever reason.

To my mind this is why the MSM hates the news and political blogs. It’s too bad that a story has to receive a few hundred thousand hits on sites like YouTube before the networks wake up to it. That’s just sad.

Like I said, for what it’s worth. Can we now get back to McCain & Obama, please?

That’s my two-cents plain.

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1 comment:

  1. Now I can watch these programs with a whole different perspective. I always thought it was ME imagining that these stories were repeated over and over again. Whew.
    I feel better now.

    ReplyDelete

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