5 Ways to Fix America's Nightly Network "News"

Network news - news programs shown on the original Big Three networks and other, newer, upstarts - is broken. Below are five examples, and what I believe they need to do to fix their news programs to better serve the American people:

More International Focus - A "world news" program that focuses solely on domestic news is not worthy of the name. And international celebrities getting into trouble or the latest plane crash overseas doesn't count as "news." Americans who are insular and insulated from the news of the world are suddenly surprised by trends both friendly and ferocious when they hit without warning. When that happens, that's a failure of the "world news" programs we watch. Network newscasts must rededicate themselves to covering the entire world.

More International Politics - Political trends are also vital to our full and complete awareness as voters and as citizens. It may not, at first glance, seem important that a new anti-American party is rising in the polls in a nation traditionally friendly to the USA, or that a certain governor was elected in a prefecture in Japan. But if that nation  turns hostile, or if that governor is more hostile to Americans remaining in a military base there than his predecessor, then that indeed is a problem that will have regional and international repercussions. Network newscasts should commit to covering international politics, because it's relevant.

The Weather Is NOT "news" - It's snowy in the winter in the Northern half of the United States. It's a fact. It's not, however, news. It's exciting to show cars skidding off the road, rivers frozen and, in other climes, wet summers, minor hurricanes and tornadoes. But aside from an in-depth analyses of how slowly the aid got there after the storm, or how we are adapting to changing weather patterns, it's not "news." Network newscasts should stop wasting time covering routine and expected weather, and blowing storms out of all proportion.

Less "Special Kid Plays On the Team" Stories - I love the stories in which a young person - who is disabled in some way or is a terminal patient - gets to play on their favorite professional sports team or on their high school team, especially when they actually score for the team! These stories (and there are many of them) are inspirational, interesting, heart-warming, and emotional. Note that none of those words are "news," and are not newsWORTHY. They should exist in a separate show, which I'm sure would get great ratings, but they should not be taking up time in the nightly newscast, crowding out actual news. Network newscasts should leave the "feel good" stories to other shows on the network.

Fewer YouTube Videos - What's truly shocking about today's American nightly "newscast" is the inclusion of actual YouTube videos. ABC News includes these (and the aforementioned "kids play on teams" videos) in its "Index" segment near the end of the program. It literally shows YouTube videos of animals doing funny things, near-miss car accidents and other hilarity, which we can see with better justification on shows like "America's Funniest Videos" or its cable show equivalents. The YouTubization (tm) of Network news must end. 

"If it bleeds, it leads" was the old saying about the nightly news and the local paper. National Network newscasts shouldn't fear though. There is plenty of blood in the political turmoil around the world to quench their viewers' hearts. Demonstrations, corruption, trade deals, hard-fought elections, coups and uprisings, and much of it with consequences for American voters and consumers.

That's one of the reasons why I founded "World Politics News," a news aggregation service that points American readers to the news they're missing on the nightly network newscasts.

American news organizations owe it to us to bring us the world, and to show us accurately and fairly what's happening THERE before it happens HERE. And if they begin to do this again, the nightly "World News" programs will once again be true to their names.

Stephen Abbott
Abbott Media Group
www.abbottmediagroup.com

#SydneyCafe Hostage Drama Showed Power of #SocialMedia

During the ‪#‎SydneyCafe‬ hostage crisis on December 15, once again the power and importance of ‪social media and the Internet as major sources how we get ‪news in the 21st Century was on full display.

It seems with every major event - be it a natural disaster, a political event, an entertainment death, or a terrorist event such as this one - the Age of the Internet shows just how interconnected the world has become, and how events even on the other side of the world can reach out and change us and our attitudes.

While cable news kept to their scheduled, pre-taped shows, millions, like me, streamed Australian TV stations live throughout the world, and we followed frequent twitter and facebook updates, and made many of our own observations, passing along data as it became known.

The dangers and pitfalls of the immediacy of Social Media as a source of news were also on full display.

Misinformation was rife - one online newspaper flashed a screenshot of a supposed twitter feed of an Islamic terror group taking credit for the Lindt cafe attack, only to be discovered later that it was a "parody" account, much to the paper's embarrassment (though the correction was swift - another benefit of instant media.)

Speculation was also rampant, with fears that this was a carefully coordinate attack with others immanent, rather than (as it turned out) a lone gunman who was facing charges in other cases and who was well-known to police and local Muslims as a fake, wanna-be Imam.

But the same could be said of TV reports, streaming from Australia (and eventually from the US) which were desperately trying to fill the air with speculative statements that turned out to be just that.

Coming back to the TV networks in the US, what was shocking was their failure to break in and report the news on what in the US was a lazy Sunday afternoon. FOX News, which seems obsessed with reporting on Islamic extremist terrorism, eventually, hours after the attack began, broke in on a re-run of "Huckabee" to show a rather nervous young woman - whom they had apparently just thrown in front of the camera -  stumbling through the basic facts, before letting an Australian news network stream for a few moments, then back to regular programming. CNN also broke into regular programming, but only for a half hour.

Blame cutbacks or the fact that it was Sunday, but the coverage was inexcusably poor, especially since this could have ended up much worse than it did.

The real winner of the day, in terms of coverage, was Bloomberg TV. With offices in Sydney just above the chocolate shop, the network dominated coverage and broke away with business news and other commentary in just the right balance, proving that there was no reason the older networks couldn't have done the same.

Meanwhile, twitter again, as in the Arab Spring and in other major events, demonstrated the sheer power of crowd-sourced news to demonstrate how well it can inform us.

The world has changed. When will the ‪Mass Media‬ catch up? Only time will tell whether they'll wake up to the changes, or whether they'll go the way of the "Big Three" American networks' news departments: a shadow of what they once were, and irrelevant.

Stephen Abbott
Principal, The Abbott Media Group‬

Also visit: World Politics News, dedicated to expanding our knowledge of politics around the world