So I'm sitting down to eat my cereal this morning and I turn on CNN for my usual ten minutes of headlines as I eat. I enjoy CNN because they generally run through the top stories in a rather objective and easy to understand manner that doesn't require all of my attention. I generally put up with the occasional 15 second voiceover about a 40 pound cat in China in exchange for coverage of the White House press conference on the Cheney shooting.
But this morning I was greeted with a press conference entirely devoted to eight Nebraska meatpackers who'd won the largest powerball lottery jackpot in history. I have no problem with CNN running a 30 second spot on the event, maybe with a funny sound bite, but breaking from their regular coverage to go to the event live? It was obvious the local press was having great fun at the conference, every other question elicited giggles and all the other questions were soft tosses. The winners responses were the usual collection of surprise, relief, thankfulness, and prognostication.
This demonstrates to me once again how news outlets craving for ratings and advertising dollars, are trumping their original responsibility to report the news of the day. In the fifteen minutes that I watched CNN, I didn't hear word one about the mosque bombing in Iraq, the President threatening to exercise his first veto, or the sentencing of Holocaust denier David Irving. With lapses like this CNN risks losing news junkies like me to the internet or worse to another network.
Ivan Pereira @ Wed, 02/22/2006 - 6:28pm
You're disregarding two key facts...
1) CNN is a 24 hour news network and so has to show tons of pieces. This is not that newsworthy but it is still news.
2) The report aired in the morning when tviewership is at its lowest. Would you rather want the lottery story to be the main focus of the 6:00 PM broadcast or Anderson Cooper?