Commanders Post at The Warpath - View Single Post - Journalism and Media Ethics: UVA, Brian Williams and Bill O'Reily

That Guy · 04-10-2015, 09:09 PM

you've got to blame the consumer a bit too. CNN used to be 50minutes of news, 5 minutes of sports, and 5 minutes of entertainment news.

now it's 55 minutes of entertainment news/hour it seems. the networks job is to sell ads. to keep you sitting down to watch them between segments, and straight news doesn't get the same kind of ratings as screaming heads... so guess what? screaming heads for everyone!

you can migrate to things like AON, BBCnews, etc that do a bit better job on bias and reporting, but news networks switched to focusing on entertainment over substance back around 2000... assuming you consider reality tv arguments and marathon disaster coverage "entertaining." they're competing with game of thrones, not max headroom. it's hard to get noticed now.

04-10-2015, 09:09 PM	#8
That Guy Living Legend Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: VA Age: 42 Posts: 17,587	Re: Journalism and Media Ethics: UVA, Brian Williams and Bill O'Reily you've got to blame the consumer a bit too. CNN used to be 50minutes of news, 5 minutes of sports, and 5 minutes of entertainment news. now it's 55 minutes of entertainment news/hour it seems. the networks job is to sell ads. to keep you sitting down to watch them between segments, and straight news doesn't get the same kind of ratings as screaming heads... so guess what? screaming heads for everyone! you can migrate to things like AON, BBCnews, etc that do a bit better job on bias and reporting, but news networks switched to focusing on entertainment over substance back around 2000... assuming you consider reality tv arguments and marathon disaster coverage "entertaining." they're competing with game of thrones, not max headroom. it's hard to get noticed now.