Reply #5: That's no excuse for filling the newscast with trivialities [View All]

such as scandals and cute kitten and puppy stories and commercials for network programs or mass market movies disguised as news stories while completely ignoring what's going on in state and local government--topics which local newscasts used to cover up till about the 1970s.

I used to volunteer at a non-commercial radio station that didn't have its own news department and used the AP wire service. It was up to the announcer which news items he or she would read during the "news at the top of the hour" segment, and the whole tone of the news changed depending who was on duty that shift. One announcer filled his news segments with "happy talk" crap, while another managed to find serious news items.

I know you have only a limited amount of time to do the news. But why fill your twenty minutes with painstaking detail about the weather and helicopter flights to high school football games? Why do you concentrate on shootings and fires that scare suburbanites into thinking that city dwellers are a bunch of degenerates instead of educating your viewers on how the city works?

Sorry, I don't buy your rationalizations.