Relabel the media.

[Brundle_Fly]

With CNN's coverage of planes that have bad landing gear eating up 2-4 hours of time, and awaiting a crash....or standing at the top of the mine, awaiting news about the miners, but having nothing new to report for the 8 hours eaten up of reporting time, that should go to and for, other stories....

There is, but one conclusion.

This is not news, this is quite simply entertainment. Although watching endless hours of nothing happening and speculation might be the reality show of the future, it cannot be labeled breaking news anymore. Breaking News would be the "a plane has crashed" or "miner's rescued"

I think the FCC should be called in on this, talking heads being allowed to spout lies unchecked, opinion trumping fact, speculation vs information. What happened to reporting the news?

call it what it is, infotainment, FOX, CNN, MSNBC are all guilty of these uninspired hacks. Seriously, they should lose their press passes.

[Dongfang Hong]

1. What do you expect for a 24-hour news station?

There simply isn't enough news to fill 24 hours. A two-hour airplane-landing story is likely to be "breaking news" for anyone who is just tuning in--and since people rarely watch CNN for more than 10-15 minutes at a time, it's justified to call it breaking news.

[Brundle_Fly]

2. I don't buy that argument.

This is a massive planet, and there is always something going on.

They have reporters in every country, they have scandals up to their eyeballs in american politics, there is a goddamned war going on, the weather is dramatically changing right before everybody's eyes, Palestine, Ukraine Gas Crisis, devastating earthquakes, Iran, Syria, Drug companies ripping off seniors, CIA scandals, whistle-blowers, fascism blossoming, etc etc...

to say that they can't find things to report on is a bad answer, and simply accepting that they have taken the road of least resistance.

How can a newspaper have 80+ pages in a day, with 1-100th the budget of a cable news channel

[NYCGirl]

3. And how much of that newspaper is ads, horoscopes, entertainment

news, society pages, "lifestyle" stories, human interest stories, etc. as opposed to "hard news". You'd probably find out that it's about the same.

[Brundle_Fly]

5. and how much of that news channel is fluffy

Larry King, figuring out what the Mandrell sisters are doing now?


and rerun from 3 hours ago, and human interest stories, and tech updates, or stock market hype.

24 hours of news would be tough, but three hours.... we can do better.

[NYCGirl]

6. They have to get ratings, unfortunately. That's the kind of stuff that

people most often watch — sad, but that's just the way it is. Decades ago, the news divisions of the networks were considered "exempt" from being a profit center, but that's now changed over the years with the rampant media consolidation.

[Dongfang Hong]

8. Oh, they could find new things to report on.

But nobody could follow it. For example, they could talk about the problems Britain's new Tory leader faces in turning around his party's fortunes. Most Americans are at best vaguely aware of a thing called a Tory, and as such would not appreciate the article. They could talk about Koizumi's continued shakeup of the power structure of the Japanese Diet. Most Americans know Japan is a land of cars, video games, anime, and ninjas, and as such would not appreciate the story. They could talk about Brazil and Argentina kissing off the IMF. Most Americans outright do not care.

You can only have so many stories going on at once. People can only remember so much, and can only follow so much. They can find things to talk about, but they can't find things people will care about. In a newspaper, people can at least skip over stories that don't interest them. Television has to find the least common denominator.

[Lone_Wolf]

9. The purpose of network news is to sell an audience to advertisers...

in order to get people to buy their crap. Predictively, the "news" is meant more to entertain than to inform. If they started reporting real news it would make people less likely to buy and consume.

[Strawman]

4. We need a stronger public media presence

The role of political "watchdog." or the function of providing an oepn forum for political discourse do not matter to corporate media. They have to make profits for shareholders. Those things are externalities to them. If they provide them to some extent, that's nice, but that's not the goal.

And the powers that be like it that way. They're trying to eliminate funding for what already is the most underfunded public broadcasting system in the Western Democratic world. They want public broadcasting to either be propaganda for the regime or nonexistent.

[LiberalEconomist]

7. An oldie but a goodie is

Infotainment: entertainment disguised as information.

[info being]

10. I think "corporate media" works fine