Tell me I'm not the only person to notice that more and more television newscasts are rerunning stories from the day before and even two days earlier. It used to be they might try to update an earlier story for filler purposes on slow days but now it seems that over half the news stories on news programs are reruns from the previous broadcasts. I think they have cut the budgets so much that they might not have any reporters left to report fresh news.
Most network and cable news channels now run long blocks of paid advertising during the late evening, early morning and weekend hours. That never would have happened under Ted Turner at CNN who believed a news channel was supposed to report the news twenty-four hours a day. Guess it is kind of hard when most of the reporters have been eliminated.
The networks have found other ways to try and milk more money from the news divisions. CNN did a special on Black America, a two part special, and then proceeded to broadcast the entire thing about 5 times over a couple of days killing off about 10 hours of coverage. Remember, every rerun means that much less original production.
Most talk shows on CNN, Headline News and others, programs like the O'Rielly Report, Glenn Beck, blah, blah, blah are rebroadcast as many as three times in 24 hours as if once wasn't enough. When too many reporters are laid off they start broadcasting more and more entertainment and celebrity expose stories since the self-promotion of the stars is always available from the studios.
Most quasi-news shows like Today, Good Morning America and others often have guests introducing new movies, television shows or books and more often than not they work for another division of the owner of the network. Thus Miley Cyrus of Hanna Montana fame who is owned by Disney is being interviewed on Good Morning America, plays a concert on that show to introduce her newest song, and shows up on several other ABC related shows which is also owned by Disney.
Fox, NBC and CBS all do the same thing when they get the chance so you never really know if a morning show is featuring talent because of the merits of the talent or because that person is contributing to the profit margin of the network. If you watch the news footage closely you can also see the same footage being used over and over again although the story may change slightly.
Which leaves us with the big question. Is our news being pre-packaged as Hillbilly Joe and Dogman say and are we being spoon fed stories that keep our attention diverted away from the truth? If we are getting a daily dose of propaganda then is anyone getting the truth? And what sinister force is behind the disappearance of real news on American television?
Stay tuned for the rest of the story...
No comments:
Post a Comment