As I was watching the news last night I became very upset. At first I thought it was because I was watching images of people's destroyed homes and people who may be without power for weeks to come, but I realized it was something else that irked me. During the last week or so media coverage of Sandy has been everywhere. This is certainly understandable as it was a storm unlike any we had seen in the northeast before. However, the nature of the coverage seemed to be eerily consistent no matter what channel I watched. News outlets simply went from one devastated scene to the next, telling stories of terrible loss and occasionally stories of hope. The thing that bothered me was that very little of what they showed was actually "news". There was often very little practical information about new developments as far as power and shelter. In a typical 30 minute newscast (not including commericials), I felt like there was often no more than 5 minutes of actual stories that could be considered news. To be honest, it often felt like local and national news stations were simply compiling images of destruction to show like a continual slideshow for viewers.
I guess my question is, when is it enough? How many destroyed lives, houses and communities do we need to see to let us know how bad things are? As seems to be the trend in the modern 24/7 news cycle, it is all about the ratings. Media outlets will show us things that will get a rise of emotion out of viewers in order to keep us from changing the channel. Those emotions may range from happiness, sadness, fear, anger or pity.
As I am finishing this post I am just realizing that this connects to chapter 4 of Kelly Gallagher's text. (I am also seeing snow starting to fall outside, great!) He has students evaluate and judge an hour long newscast and seperate the "real" news from the fluff pieces. They find an average of about 6 minutes of "real" news in an hour long newscast. Now I am not saying the devastation of Sandy is a fluff piece, but I think the sad thing here is that media outlets may have used the scenes of devastation in the same way. I may be wrong about this. Maybe, like others, I had spent too much time watching the news coverage and it made me angry/sad simply because of the devastation. I would love to hear some feedback on this one. How did the news coverage make you feel?
