I guess I've never really watched the news before. This weekend I watched MSNBC Nightly News, the Channel 4 local news at 10, and the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. I took copious notes on each, but there were far too many stories (if you can call them that) to list each one here.
There's a lot to comment on. Cable, network and local news weren't exactly the same, of course, but there were some common trends.
The hectic pace was pretty common to all three. For example, the half-hour MSNBC Nightly News had five full stories and three news briefs. Local news was even worse. I could barely keep up with the number of stories they pumped out (luckily they repeated the sports stories a few times, so it wasn't too bad).
Content was very different in local news. While the two other shows had quite a bit of politics, the local news had a more scatter-shot approach. The 10 o'clock local covered everything from wild horses being rounded up to Gov. Ritter's new budget. I actually found that interesting, but it was a bit too frenetic. If this had been a newspaper that I could browse at my leisure, I'd appreciate the variety even more.
Attribution was interesting. For local news it wasn't as much of an issue because so much of the show was sports. And for that segment they had plenty of player interviews. The other two shows dealt more with politics and other controversies, so they needed more attribution. Most of the time they gave it, even if it was in tiny font shown for about two seconds.
Phrases like "earlier studies showed" and "experts say" abounded. For political stories, "McCain aides" and "Obama advisers" were very talkative. Just not on camera. Clips of stock campain footage cropped up a lot too, with either the original audio or reporter commentary.
A segment on Obama's fund raising really caught my attention. The CBS show tossed out figures for how much he raised got tossed about, but with no visible source (unless they flashed it so fast I missed it, but I really don't think so). They also made strong statements about who has been donating to Obama. Again, no sources. The most grievous lapse was when the show cast doubt on the legitimacy of certain donors. They showed a CG spread sheet, totally unofficial, showing the supposed "suspicious" donor and how much he or she gave. There was absolutely no clue where this information came from.
The news briefs on CBS were the worst. One segment said that gun sales were up 8%, likely because people feared Obama would take away gun right or because they feared an increase in crime. The entire clip was less than a minute, had no quotes or interviews and absolutely no sources. Awesome.
The choice of story length and order surprised me as well. Again, CBS Evening News rankled me the most. They gave in-depth coverage on a cancer study being canceled. The FBI's child prostitution bust only merited a 30-second news brief. Even the purple tomato segment had more coverage and actual interviews. The report on the death of a powerful al Qaeda leader only got half a minute too, now that I think about it. War on what?
Looking at these three shows, I feel like broadcast news is trying to do too much. Each show had a good number of stories, most of them covered very superficially. I almost wondered why they bothered. It's hard to fit a meaningful story into thirty minutes, especially when ten minutes are given to advertisements. Each show at least introduced the stories, which is something, I suppose. Broadcast just seems so inefficient for conveying the news. I'll stick to print.
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