Tell me… Who is sick and tired of all
the drama that is out there in the media? Why can’t the media just dish it out plain
and simple like they used to? Just give it to us without all of the BS
involved. This ends up causing people so much uncertainty; making people over
time, to tune out. So then when something big and important takes, it won’t
seem like it is such a big deal and people won’t listen and that is when bad
things happen especially when we are dealing with hurricanes and tsunamis.
The worst offender’s of the drama
going on in news most recently was Storm Sandy. Second is the presidential race.
Firstly about Storm Sandy (News in
2012): The media made it sound so terrible. And yes, it was – but it was no
Hurricane Katrina (news in 2005), it wasn’t near as awful as the media was
making it out to be. According to Wikipedia.org, The confirmed death toll is
1,836…However 135 people remain categorized as missing (2); whereas, Hurricane
Sandy had a minimum of 253 (1). And don’t get me wrong, death at any rate is
terrible, but the news made it out to be as big of a deal as Hurricane Katrina.
That is the part that is wrong. I am assuming that the media will get worse
when it comes to drama and any little storm will end up being top news. What
the media should be doing is simply updating the people of what/where and how
the storm is. Then afterwards the media ends up taking all the super sad
instances and projecting them across the world. I think we need to get media
thinking about finding the happiness in the storm. Let’s show some of the happy
endings.
2012 Presidential Race: Take for instance
CNN and how they were so dramatic with the projections of the election. There
were constant updates and “major projections” throughout the night, annoyingly
so. Fox news wasn’t even taken seriously since they joked around so much for
the night of elections. But that isn’t anything new, now is it? MSNBC seems to
have the most logical way to delivering the news. This is why their ratings are
surpassing CNN’s (6).
I want to discuss dramatics in different
types of media. In the following four paragraphs, I am simply talking about the
media that delivers the majority of the news. There is a wide range of the
dramatics in each of the following media. My opinions are below of the entities
that are the worst offenders and the ones that are likely to keep the drama
out.
Radio – According to radio.about.com
there are a total of 13,476 radio stations in the United States as of March 2004
(3). I find FOX to be highly dramatic, CBS mid-range and least dramatic would
be NPR and BBC. The only thing saving radio is now that you can choose your
poison so to speak. You can find an entertainment news, science, or regular
news.
Newspaper – My local newspaper is
pretty great about not being dramatic. They don’t have to be dramatic to sell
newspapers; they are the only newspaper in town. Looking at nationwide
newspapers though, I only want to talk about one. It is one of the saddest
moments in newspaper history: the unfortunate purchase of the Wall Street
Journal by Rupert Murdoch in 2007 (Vivian 65). Now, no longer the old
traditional newspaper by purchasing this for way over what it was worth, he had
to make changes. I image you can guess the last time that the Wall Street
Journal won a Pulitzer Prize. Yes.
2007 (4).
Magazines – Magazines have to be
dramatic. Think about these media dinosaurs. How else are they going to survive
without using drama to sell themselves? They need their flashy covers and
bright pictures of celebrities to sell themselves. Just like radio though, the
thing they have going for them is that they have their own niche. There are
magazines for women, parents, teens, travel, fashion and hundreds more.
Television – This poor, poor media. It
has gotten overrun with crime stories and reality TV. But focusing on news,
again, we go back to FOX and Murdoch. Dramatic. Even the old trusty CNN has its
share of drama. Just listen to their theme song. I don’t know if it is because
the news on television is starting to get washed away by the internet and they
need to dramatize it up more to keep up or what, but some of the news should
remain news. Hopefully CSNBC will continue to deliver news straight up and
their rating will also continue to go up.
Internet – The worst offender. Possibly
only because the world is so vast, but still – come on yahoo.com news is
outrageous. I don’t think they should call it news. They should come up with a
new word to use for the type of news.
In conclusion I will state the
problems as to why I think the media has so much drama involved:
·
Americans
like drama. I think that the media is just giving (some of) the country what
they want. If you think of the way our nation is headed, it is all about
reality TV and crime shows, that is what the majority wants to see, so maybe
there is no going back to straight delivered news focused on something more
than crime and celebrities.
·
Reporters
who cover the press full-time are a rarity.
·
Part
of the problem is that a lot of the little fish get eaten by sharks. The big
name companies own not only a radio station, but a television network; they’ve
got a place on the internet, and a magazine or two on top of that. So the
dramatics continue throughout all of their companies.
·
Greed.
Journalists want to make profit, and that doesn’t coincide with important news.
Instead journalists are concentrating on the crimes and stories without happy
endings just to sell a story. The more woesome, the better sell as in easier to
sell and worth more. This really comes into play with celebrities, as we all
know.
I want Walter Cronkite back. Now
that was a man who knew news and how to deliver it. Well besides for the little
incident of 1968 when Walter Cronkite shifted public opinion of the Vietnam War
by speaking from his heart (5).
Sources:
Vivian, John. The Media of Mass
Communication, Eleventh Edition. Winona State University: Pearson
Education, Inc., 2013. Print.
1.
“Hurricane
Sandy.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 6, December 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy>.
2.
“Hurricane
Katrina.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 6, December 2012.
3.
“How
Many Radio Stations are there in the United States?” Web. 8, December 2012. <http://radio.about.com/cs/radiodatabases/qt/blhowmanystatio.htm>.
“List of National Newspapers.”
Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web 8, December 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_newspapers>.
4.
“The
Wall Street Journal.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web 8, December 2012.
5.
“12
Events That Changed How Media Outlets Cover News.” Web 8, December 2012.
6.
“MSNBC”
Web 8, December 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC>.
