Landing problems, car accidents, other local tragedies: Why national news?

What is with the recent fascination and hours-long play-by-plays on the cable stations with these things. My understanding for instance, is that emergency landings (for landing gear problems, etc.) are not uncommon and usually resolved without much problem or injury. Why has this become national news?

We start to get some coverage on the spy story, and BAM, cut to the story of a plane circling for three hours and then landing safely. It wouldm't bother me (ok, it really would still bother me), if there wasn't other crucially important things going on.

Daryn Kagan just joked "We're turning into the Aviation Channel; we're going to show every plane taking off and landing in St. Louis..." She got that just about right! Kathleen Koch now confirming that these sorts of situations are fairly regular occurances.

WHY?

Don't get me wrong, I feel for the families of those lost in the Miami crash and all....

But don't we have more important news happening in the world somewhere3?!

Once 24 hr news channels came about 25 years ago, they are starved for VISUALS. CNN signs up networks of local "affiliate" stations to provide them those visuals.

I tend to be impatient with the "news" anyway. "Cute" news also drives me nuts.

You and I are probably not representative of the public, though.

don't tell anyone. :)

Cover anything but what is really going on.

Their research seems to indicate that "consumers'" minds don't care to take in issues of width, breadth, or depth. Small hard-drives up in the ole noggin, apparently, so we're given the pablum that comes and goes through brains with little nutritional value or disruption.
Gotta save room for commercials, right? Why upset us when there's shopping to be done?

(which reminds me...what's up with the blonde girl in Aruba?) <--snarcasm

And I've always wondered if consumers don't care because they don't KNOW about anything, because they are never told by the news (another circular effect). :::sigh:::

Blonde girl in Aruba, runaway bride, planes circling in the air: all of these seem to be of limited national import. Why can't we have a channel that weeds all the fluff out?

...there is an island in all this.

how glad I am to get a solid, commercial-free, hour of news each day with The News Hour. 'Twould still be a bargain at twice the price.

bless 'em!

The instant some terrible tragedy occurs where mass numbers of people are killed instantly has become to the 24/7 news industry what the "cum shot" is to the porn movie industry. It's the money shot.

Has been that way ever since they caught a plane crashing into the World Trade Center live on television.

OJ would pull over and shoot himself, on camera.

They'd have loved that.

tons of useless information for people who do not need it.

and or course, there are millions of people with nothing better to do
than sit and watch all this useless crap. and those people HAVE to
see advertisements to make their lives worth living.

thus, the airwaves are full of useless information.

the only tweety worth watching is the one who hangs with sylvester and grandma.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/chinamart.htm

Don't look over there, Americans! Look over here!

Stop it with the NSA spying on you, already.

Don't you know there's a white-girl-napper on the loose in Bumfuck, Idaho?

It's mental gridlock.

The traffic jam in American discourse.

Lord knows, the lap dog media does not want to bite the hand that is feeding them, and thus they will report only the very minimum on issues concerning the crimes that Bushco are committing. What they're hoping for is that if they barely report it, then the issue will quickly drop from public conciouslness, thus leaving Bushco free to commit more atrocities.

This is what happens when you've got five corporations controling 90 plus percent of the media in this country, especially when three of those corporations are making money directly off the war, and the other two make money indirectly.

When Democrats regain power two things they must immediately do. The first is to repeal the '96 Telecom Act, the second is to restore the Fairness Doctrine. We won't have an honest, free media in this country until they do.

The '96 Telecom act essentially lifted the limits of how many local radio or TV stations a corporation can own, thus limiting diversity. An example is my own home town. Clear Channel owned two radio stations here up until this bill went through, but with the limits lifted, they now own six, in a town of 100,000. And if you remeber, after this bill there was a lot of media merging. The reason why is because there was now no legal constraint to owning many stations in one locality. While the general trend had been towards a more centralized media before '96, the '96 Telecom Act really opened the flood gates. Whereas in '95, twenty five corporations controlled the vast majority of the media here in this country, after the Telecom Act that number shrank rapidly to six, and now down to five. Media monopoly is just not healthy for a democracy, especially when that monopoly is held by corporations with direct interests in the war.

The Fairness Doctrine had been in place until the mid-eighies, until Reagan repealed it. The Fairness Doctrine essentially stated that a media entity couldn't present just one side of an issue, they had to give equal room and equal time to both. Thus, while you may have had stations running RW talk shows, they would have to balance their programming with the progressive POV. Reagan's elimination of this opened up the flood gates for modern hate radio. It simply wasn't possible for a radio station to run Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly etc, because they wouldn't have had the programming time to run the balancing programs fromt the left. But with the Fairness Doctrine eliminated, it was wide open for the RW media machine to go to work, and boy did they. Rush broke the ground, and was soon followed by Hannity, et al. In fact if it wasn't for the Fairness Doctrine being lifted, we probably wouldn't have Fox Television, at least not in the rabid RW "fair and balanced" version we have now.

Hope this helps. If you want more information, it is out there on the 'net. Just google the terms and a wealth of material will be forthcoming.

know where those stand now? And I really thought there was some requirement remaining for "equal time" in the media, or is that now just a voluntary thing. (Of course, if FAUX calls itself "fair and balanced" then I guess the voluntary thingie doesn't work anyway.)