The Real News
I watched CBS 58 News at 5:30 on Sunday, September 25, 2016. The in studio anchors were Marshanna Hester, an African American woman, and Evan Kruegel, a Caucasian male. The on scene reporters were only on scene live in Green Bay at the Packers football game and the rest were prerecorded.
There were approximately 14 stories that were reported on, starting and ending the thirty minute news segment with a Packers game recap. For some, that is probably a good news story. I believe it lacks actual news. The weather also appeared 2 times in thirty minutes and that is neutral and everyone that is local, need to have weather updates. The only other neutral stories were mentioning of the politics that will grace Wisconsin with their presence in the upcoming week and the presidential debate that will air live on Monday night.
The "good news stories" included peaceful protests in Charlotte because of a shooting that involved an African American male and a Caucasian male police officer, the "Race for the Cure" event at Summerfest grounds, and a follow up story on a Caucasian female child that received a kidney from her Caucasian female teacher.
The "bad news stories" made up a little less than fifty percent of the news. There were stories on local shootings, national shootings, and a local drowning on Milwaukee's south side in a lagoon.
I realized that there was absolutely no world news story and it makes it seem like Americans only care about what is going on in America or in our local communities. They also kept referring to CBS 58, as if we forgot what channel we were watching and they promoted their news and weather app several times.
My findings show that news underrepresents some minority groups. The stories that had minorities as the subject were only the "bad news stories" while the uplifting and light hearted news stories main subjects were Caucasian women. Only one story had a subject that wasn't born into "Generation X" and that was the young woman that received the kidney from the teacher. So the Millennial Generation and Baby Boomers were underrepresented also.
To conclude my findings, this particular news segment did not show the reality of what is going on locally, nationally or globally. It only represented a small demographic group and the local population is too diverse to have received this particular news segment without questioning what else may be going on here.
*I watched live news and could not find a URL for the segment.
I see that you recognized that minorities and older people were underrepresented. Also that the bad news stories made up less than half the news stories (maybe to down play what's going on). The conclusion shows that you read the material you recognized that the news sort did not show what was going on locally, nationally or globally and showed only a small demographic group. Tavia
ReplyDeleteThe broadcast that I had watched also included more than 50% negative stories and the only story about minorities was about the Charlotte shooting, so like you said minorities were underrepresented and in my newscast, they were represented negatively. I agree that the news tends to cover a small demographic perhaps to try to attract a that audience.
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