NBC Nightly News

This seemed like an appropriate post for today, since this is what we were talking about in class today.  A few weeks ago, I did the post on the local news, and this one is for the nightly news.  Before I go through what was on the news, I have to comment on the difference between these two types of news broadcasting.  We always talk in class about how the local news has more "fluff" than the nightly news, and I never realized how true that is.  While the local news does sometimes touch upon the larger issues, it spends much more time with "fluff" content, such as fires and robberies.  As was said in class today, the nightly news does tend to be more serious, but I found that it is still insufficient.

These, in order, were tonight's topics:

-Flooding in North Dakota along the Red River

-Tornadoes in the South

-The state of the U.S. economy... there were 652,000 new applicants for unemployment this year

-The Treasury Secretary has asked for more strict regulation on the financial system

-Obama's new strategy for the Middle East, to be officially announced tomorrow, but it is already known that it is not the same as the plan that he ran with

-Defective drywall that emits sulfuric gas, causing people to become sick

-Earthquakes in California, getting closer to San Andreas Fault

-Bonus system on Wall Street

-Passport applications down 25% from last year, less money, less travel

-"Making a Difference" this is a new addition to the nightly news, focuses on local people doing their part to make a difference during financial crisis. tonight it was a salon in Massachusetts that gives free haircut coupons to unemployed clients.

I realized while watching this that their is a very crucial question that we missed in today's class discussion: Why is there only a half hour for the news?  I mean, we did kind of discuss this when we were talking about what people want to see on TV, and it seems that they'd rather have entertainment than news.  If the nightly news had more time, I think that more of the issues that we need to hear about would make the cut.

Also, in class today, we learned all the reasons why media picks the stories that they do.  One of the biggest things that media likes to cover is crisis and tragedy.  This explained to me why flooding in North Dakota and tornadoes in the South were the first things on the news, while Obama's new Middle East strategy was shoved in the middle before defective drywall.  It strikes me as slightly pathetic that this defective drywall even made it on the news.  I think that the time spent discussing this could have been better spent on a more crucial social issue.

Overall, I don't know if NBC chose the "right" stories to put on tonight, maybe I think there are some things that are more important than others, but this is their decision.  Given what they chose, I think that they ordered the stories pretty well in order of importance.  At first I thought maybe the flooding in North Dakota wasn't that important, but then I remembered our class discussion and I guess it makes sense to report on disaster first.  Personally, I would have liked to see Obama's new strategy for the Middle East rank a little higher in importance.  Maybe tomorrow, when they have the full report on his plan there will be more time devoted to it.