Single-story news channels

[mtbc]

I am not sure what the point is of having access to several full-time news channels on television if they are all dominated by the same story about which there is little new news. Is there not some other news from somewhere they can give us? At around the time of Biden's first press conference as President, one couldn't escape it, even many hours afterward. I thought this trial in Minneapolis was successfully dominating the news, even though right now it mostly seems to focus soberly on incidental detail of matters like police organization and training, but instead every channel is now filled with many minutes of this lone assault on the Capitol, though we have less than a half-minute of actual information about it yet. At least it is not as bad as the occasional coverage of, a Royal baby will be born soon, here is the street outside the hospital where we don't know any more than you, the viewer.

Comments

[aldabra]

We watch CNN and BBC; often they think different stories are the One True Thing.

[mtbc]

Oh, that's interesting. Annoyingly, the regular BBC News channel is on the package I don't subscribe to, I do get to catch the World News on PBS though. (I was in Ros Atkins' French class.)

[shadowkat]

Yes, welcome to the American news media coverage of boring political minutia - that they feel they have to analyze to death. Or exaggerate.

In the 1990s? We had the OJ Simpson bit - for about two days every news channel (this was before we had streaming, and 24/7 news channels outside of CNN - ie before Fox News) covered the White Bronco slowly making its way down the highway with a police escort chasing it, also slowly. It was the most tedious and absurd car chase I've ever seen. My brother who was in LA at the time, explained that they did that all the time in LA. Every car chase was televised.

They do this. It's annoying. They preempt my soap opera - which I'm taping to show me footage that I could see later on the evening news, and most likely will, also at 4p, for their breaking news cast. So why they feel the need to preempt my soap opera at 3pm to show it, I don't know. Also it's not like they know anything. And why they can't just state - oh someone drove through the Capital Barricade and killed an officer - we'll get back to you during our scheduled news broadcast with new information, assuming we receive it, instead of twenty - thirty minutes of futile speculation.

But hello, American media. They are bullies, idiots, and like to scare folks to death. Then they whine about no one trusting them. Gee? I wonder why?

(I ignore the broadcast media for the most part, and stick with the NY Times, and NY1 - which is a local channel that seems to be even-keeled.)

[wpadmirer]

Television is definitely NOT the place to get your news. (Well, local news is okay, but not national or international.) I read the Washington Post, Reuters, AP, and various other things on-line. I pay for a digital subscription to the Washington Post because it's the only "national" newspaper I respect. The New York Times has gone downhill horrendously since Trump was elected. I have no respect for them at all.

Another paper that is good that YOU might like is the Wall Street Times. Excellent articles, but I am not interested in finance, and a lot of their articles relate to finance.

[mtbc]

Mmm, I also like The Economist and indeed generally think well of WaPo, disappointing about the NYT though, I've often liked them (also the International Herald Tribune while it existed). Alas, I'm looking to catch up a bit while working out or breaking down boxes or whatever so, at least at those times, television's the easiest. (And then radio in the kitchen while I'm cooking!)