The Now of News: An Opinion

NPR—dominant source in my information gathering
National News—normal secondary or tertiary news source
Politico—new news source added for this assignment
And as an extra: Fox News Local Affiliate coverage of the RNC
This, of course, is not the extent of my information gathering, but were the selected areas I chose for this assignment.

I have found through this experience that trying to add a new method of receiving the news, i.e., Politico, takes a lot more effort than I expected. I have my news sources and follow them within the context of what my schedule permits. I pay much more attention to news that comes from email sources to which I subscribe as well as industry publications. I am not normally a news “reader” since reading requires more dedicated time than I can normally devote to my news gathering. I do however read the news when sitting and waiting for food to be prepared, or at a break moment in my routine when a newspaper makes itself available. One might call me a “news opportunist”—something that I believe has or could become more prevalent. The reason I like NPR/MPR so much is that it allows me to work on other things while getting the news, or to listen when driving. The national news has often played a secondary roll in my information gathering, since it allows the multitasking of eating dinner or relaxing before the evening activities start. While I realize this is beyond the assignment my self analysis of how I gather news—an unexpected learning byproduct of this assignment, I will now address the questions we were supposed to address.

While admittedly my news opportunism was less this week than other weeks due to some extraordinary circumstances, I did manage to watch the last night of the republican convention covered by Fox news’s local affiliate. Several things became apparent. Obvious effort was undertaken on Fox’s choice of camera shots within the Republican National Convention designed to show a broader diversity of participants. The result of this coverage was seemingly a spectacle designed to change the traditional homogenous perception of the Republican Party by a news gathering organization. It was way over-the-top and I suspect not a true proportional representation of the attendees as one would hope to find in objective journalism. I think after a while some of the people who were constantly on-camera soon became uncomfortable for the extra attention they were given over their fellow delegates.

Fox’s coverage unfortunately was in touch with the teargas action rather than the peaceful protests—as dictated by the viewing public who is sadly more interested to watch in drama over reality—myself included. I have to say, it is much more interesting to watch a conflict rather than a peaceful group, but the distortion occurs in our minds since peaceful actions are rarely given the same airplay relative to their time, frequency and magnitude within which they occur. I remember seeing one brief image of the peaceful gatherings but many images of the escalations. The escalations for obvious reasons make compelling photographs and stories. In this particular instance, the teargas action was given plenty of airplay and discussion and the peaceful protests were given a few words of coverage. The irony of course is that the violent protesters got what they wanted—coverage. The other irony is that the more effective protestors, the peaceful ones, are much more effective in creating real change. This wasn’t one of the news outlets I volunteered to comment on, but since I was able to watch several hours of it on television, I thought I could do a more thorough analysis.


MPR offered two sessions, one of which was hosted by Jeff Horowich, possibly both, that was called “What does it mean to be a Democrat” and “What does it mean to be a Republican.” The people from these sessions seemed to be carefully hand picked also to challenge what the status quo about their respective parties. One could imagine those chosen were partially representative, but are probably not what one would call a broad cross section of their respective parties. It was informative and did exemplify that the stereotypes of each party are unfair. I have to admit that I was compelled to a greater level of understanding of the party opposing to my beliefs and that I disagreed with some of the interviewees that shared my political party. Much of the questioning, however seemed leading—designed with the idea of challenging the traditional stereotypes of the two parties and creating the answers before they were asked. Scripted comedy is only slightly more predictable. I am not sure whether this leading-question journalism is really the best means of showing the true faces of either party. One would need to approach the subject with the same questions for both parties and without an agenda. It is a great idea, but maybe in need of some refining to make it truly useful in evaluating ones political positions. As with science, a larger sample and greater objectivity can be effective.

Politico was a good read, seemingly very professional and objectively toned (with the exception of their accompanying videos which seemed to be designed with youth culture in mind) and I suppose offered more coverage to the Republicans due to their recent national convention. I didn’t have the luxury of balancing their coverage of the Democratic National Convention since, at that time it wasn’t a traditional part of my media mix, and our seminar had not yet started. There was, as with all of the coverage of this last week, very little coverage of the issues and far more public vetting for McCain’s Vice Presidential.

There were plenty of articles that seemed to be addressing poll numbers which of course means nothing when the issues are no longer being discussed. I can’t remember that last time I heard anything about health care, or the economy that went beyond sound bites and filler dialogue. The public gets what the public wants, whether it really needs it or not. At present, the campaigns seem to be touting, and the media seems to be covering, non-issues, inter-party jabs, and polling numbers. Politico was no exception within the scope of the few visits I made to its website, I can’t say that I read every article or looked at it daily and so this may be an unfair assessment since I have very little history with this news source. History with one’s attended media sources is important since one can understand when there are biases and have a better understanding of the objectivity of the news provider.

The NBC national news followed suit, albeit with much less gusto and depth of information. One could get more information from going to the internet to follow up on stories of interest, but definitely lacked in depth coverage on the actual television shows. They generally offered the highlights which is what they are designed to do—provide a thumbnail sketch of the day’s happenings to an overtaxed public. That being said, even the national news highlights, while better edited for content, still tended toward the sensational albeit less than the local “happy talk and human interest” news coverage.

MPR, while a little harder to find the time to listen this week as much as I had when employed as a staff photographer, generally chose experts and allowed listener call-ins which I found informative. It is a great way to get a cross section of coverage and it is a great way to tap into the interests and diverse opinions of the listeners. It is of course limited to MPR listeners which is a drawback, but they do get interesting guests that challenge pre-existing ideas and offer new opinions. It is the filling station of my personal media mix.