Frontline

When watching the third part of Frontline's "News War," three specific segments really stood out to me. The first, segment 16: A New Definition for What's News, really made me think about the type of news issues that are being broadcasted and written about in the daily news. I have realized that today, sponsors and advertisers have so much control over networks, that news content is based on "what sells" rather than what is important. Like in the Frontline clip, news stations are beinning to broadcast issues on having good restaurant manners, and dating tips for singles. They are beinning to focus less on the crucial information that people need to hear, and more on petty information that will bring in more income. This type of journalism does not adhere to the "Murrow Standard" of traditional journalism. Murrow refused to censor his broadcasts on "See it Now," even when CBS threatened to fire him because he believed in reporting the truth. However, CBS believed that their ratings were dropping because Murrow's broadcasts were too rash. It's disapointing that people are being deprived of important news, and instead listening to frivolous news because news stations are more worried about increasing profit.

After watching segment 22: The fight to save the paper, it made me realize the danger that newspapers are in to stay in business. Because technology has exlpoded over the last decade, people have more access to the internet, and they are accessing news online much more then through newspapers. It is more convenient to access news stories online rather than reading a paper, and therefore newspapers are losing profit. To compensate for this profit decrease, they have been cutting journalists. This vicious cycle is not just affecting newspapers but the economy. I believe that if more and more papers go out of business, then it will severly affect jobs and will not help our economic situation. Honestly, I would be very sad and disappointed if one day, there are no more newspapers and news is just being broadcasted over T.V. networks and on the Internet. Traditional journalism began in newspapers and it would be very strange if one day they no longer existed because people are finding their news in other sources.

The last segment that really captured my attention was segment 18: "Info Snacking." I was very interested to learn that as technology is rapidly growing, T.V. networks are feeling pressure to keep up. Therefore they are putting clips of news issues online that were originally broadcasted on T.V. What I like about this new form of accessing news, is that the viewer is in control of what they want to watch, when they want to watch it. Most people's schedules have become so busy that they do not have time to dedicate an hour every day to watching news. Now people can go online and get the same information condensed into a smaller story. Networks like Dateline have started using this new form of reporting news.