TV News Review

Nearly 24 hours ago the story broke about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. The cable channels have been in 20-24 hour live coverage of this story. They have all sent some of their big name anchors to the scene.

Fox News has Sheppard Smith, Bill Hemmer, Greta Van Sustren, plus many, many reporters on location. CNN has John Roberts, Soledad O’Brien and Anderson Cooper, plus their army of reporters. MSNBC has Contessa Brewer and NBC evening news anchor Brian Williams reporting from the scene, plus their respective reporters.

With all these people, plus the reporters and anchors back in the studios, all the attention is focused on this single story. Understandably so. But this story begins to run into the same problem that all BIG stories have, there isn’t enough news to fill the airtime, but you don’t dare cover anything else either. Thus the Big Story Conundrum. There isn’t enough news from this single story to fill the airtime, yet you can’t cover anything else either.

The channels have to cover the big stories to the near, or total, exclusion of other news because they know people will be tuning in through out the day to see the latest. The producers don’t dare go to other news in the fear the viewer will change channels or that the competition will cover something they miss. This results in coverage from all the channels that becomes nearly indistinguishable from each other.

CNN, Fox News, MSNBC all carry all the news conferences that are held by all of the various agencies and officials. They all interview the same witnesses, victims and family members of victims, all with the same stories. They all interview the same politicians from the area of the story. They all talk to the same experts on the scene. They all talk to their own in house experts, who have the same information and make the same speculations. They all show the same, or nearly identical, footage and photos.

Then they begin having their various reporters telling about previous disasters that are similar to the current tragedy, so to give this one context. They have other reporters to talk about the possibility this could happen again and where. This is often followed by the anchor talking with an expert to further speculate based upon the sketchy facts. The viewers become awash in “What if..” questions that spiral farther and farther from the known facts.

One would think with 24 hours a day of airtime the news channels could cover a big story and still have time to report the other news of the day.

The irony is that 24 hour news channels were conceived with the idea that by having 24 hours to report the news that there would be more time to look in depth on stories and to cover smaller stories. But the outcome has been the viewer receiving the nearly same 30 minute to an hour of news, over and over during the day. This is never more so than when a big story happens.

One Eyed Man