Thursday, January 31, 2008

Tabloidy



Yeah, I could have told you this a long time ago:
In their craven pursuit of clicks, the editors at CNN.com,
MSNBC.com, and Foxnews.com turn their sites into virtual
tabloids by peppering their home pages with the most sordid
and bizarre stories that can be culled from the world's news
wires.
Remember this. I might be mistaken but this morning when I checked
out CNN.com I believe the top story was Britney Spears being hospitalized.
It is odd that the cable networks would never run these as their top stories
on television but why do feel comfortable doing so on the internet.

What is this trend attributed to? I don't know. It could be the younger
audience that lives on the web. It could be that blogs often have funny
and catchy headlines, therefore, they are just trying to keep up their
competition.

3 comments:

UJ said...

Just as a devil's advocate, let me toss this at you. Since a reader has internet access to CNN.com, FOX.com, etc, would they also not have equal internet access to Democracy Now, Real News, Google News, etc?

In the grand scheme of free choice, is it really CNN's fault for being tabloidy, or is it the reader's fault for selecting such a poor news source?

Why fault it for something it's NOT instead of choosing something that IS.

Cui Bono?

Teresa said...

True, one has choices in what news sources they choose. But as a news organization don't they also have a responsibility to put out news?

UJ said...

No, the corporation doesn't have any responsibility to do anything but make profit for their shareholders.

We, as citizen consumers, are literally put in the position of being purely "thankful" when industry does something we appreciate.

Duty, Responsibility, Accountability, these have NOTHING to do with the operations of a business.

But, as a conservative, you already know this. This is your corporate platform.

Now you see why I say stop attacking the media, be the media?