A recent study conducted rips into 44 local news affiliates for not running enough coverage on Iraq.
Sorry. Let me repeat that in case you misread it the first time.
A recent study conducted rips into 44 local news affiliates for not running enough coverage on Iraq.
Got that?
Here’s the typical breakdown of a local newscast as reported by the Annenberg School of Communications, UOW:
* Ads: 8 minutes
* Sports/weather: 6 minutes
* Elections: 3 minutes, 11 seconds
* Crime: 2 minutes, 34 seconds
* Local interest : 1 minute, 56 seconds
* Teasers, intros: 1 minute, 43 seconds
* Health: 1 minute, 22 seconds
* Other: 1 minute, 12 seconds
* Injury: 55 seconds
* Business/economy: 47 seconds
* Iraq: 25 seconds
* Foreign policy: 13 seconds
And?
See, what the school’s point is, is that local affiliates are not doing their job by not mentioning more of Iraq. Obviously they have a problem with the amount of Crime news, Sports news, and everything else, and that the paucity of coverage is a direct reflection of their indifference toward Iraq.
The problems with this are manyfold, in my opinion, but they all come back to the same thing: It’s not the job of the local affiliate to play national news.
We have national newscasts for national news. If a news story doesn’t have a local slant, it’s not for the local affiliates to run in the first place. If I want national news, I’ll watch Fox News or CNN to get it. I want my local channel to put up news that matters to me. 25 seconds on Iraq is more than enough for a local affiliate to run when you have 24-hour cable news channels running wall-to-wall coverage of Iraq from sun-up to sun-down.
My local affiliates, in the NYC area, all play plenty of Iraq coverage and I can guarantee you it’s more than 25-30 seconds of it. Why? Because there are lots of soldiers from the New York National Guard in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. If something happens to them, the affiliates chime right in and you hear about it that night. That’s their job; reporting the aspects of the war that are directly related to the market they broadcast in.
I’m usually the first to bag on the media in this country. Nine times out of ten, I think they get the story wrong, don’t practice due dilligence in their research, and are just flat out free-and-loose with the facts. But to write a report on what the locals cover as if it’s some kind of injustice is just silly.
Oh, and not being one to miss an opportunity, the Senator for the prevention of free election speechSenator from the State of Arizona, John McCain, has been pushing (yes you read that right; using his influence with newscasts, apparently) for stations to have more election coverage (gotta get that party platform out, and he’ll strongarm ya if you don’t!) and plans on using this study in a press conference today to highlight what he sees as a shortcoming of local affiliates.
Aren’t you glad things are so good in Washington that this is what they spend time puttering around with?
And while I’m on the subject, isn’t anyone a bit curious how much the school got from the federal government to conduct this study? I’d sure like to know!