Important issues neglected while MSM focus is on distractions

[dajoki]

"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser
http://mediamatters.org/items/200608260001

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Important issues are neglected while media voyeurs focus on stories of little national significance

We were reminded of those questions -- and, more broadly, of the stunning lack of attention paid by many news organizations to the most important issues of the day -- by recent coverage of the ruling that the NSA program is illegal.

Last week, the weblog Think Progress noted that on the day of the ruling, the three major television news broadcasts -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- combined to run stories about the ruling that totaled only 2 minutes, 52 seconds. By comparison, the three network news broadcasts spent more than 15 minutes that same night on the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation -- a story of, to put it bluntly, no national significance whatsoever. NBC's coverage was the most egregious: more than seven and a half minutes on Ramsey and only 27 seconds on the NSA ruling.

Meanwhile, a contributor to the popular blog Talking Points Memo pointed out that the morning after the ruling, the Times ran front-page articles on both the NSA case and the Ramsey case -- but listed 13 reporters as contributing to the Ramsey story and only two contributing to the article about the NSA ruling.

The Times' Ramsey article checked in at more than 2,400 words, while the paper found space for only 1,500 words of reporting about the NSA ruling (plus a 550-word editorial.)

Put simply, this is an appalling failure by the nation's leading news organizations -- and it isn't the fault of reporters like the Times' Eric Lichtblau and Adam Liptak, who wrote the article about the NSA ruling. It's the fault of the people who decided to devote only two reporters to covering the ruling, while putting 13 on the Ramsey story. It's the fault of the people who decided that JonBenet Ramsey deserved more coverage than a federal judge's ruling that the Bush administration had violated the law and the Constitution. It's the fault of people who continually make decisions to devote resources, column inches, and airtime to stories like the Ramsey case and the so-called "Runaway Bride" instead of stories that matter.

And that's the important part. We don't have any interest in stories like the Runaway Bride, but if news organizations think they can pay some bills by appealing to the public's inner voyeurs, that's their business. Literally. But when they leave stories of actual national significance uncovered, or poorly covered, while devoting massive resources to lurid local crime stories, that's something we should all care about. That's something we should reject.