Media Problems: Wagging the Dog...

Well, its about time I started ranting about the
media. After all, I spent far too much money getting a
degree in the subject.

This morning I was talking to a friend about "Waggin'
the Dog." If you aren't familiar with the term, this
is when an administrations creates news events to
distract from less favorable news events. I.E. Bush
making a Supreme Court Nomination to distract from the
expected Libby indictment. Or Clinton bombing an
Asprin factory to distract from a stained dress.

Now, TO BE CLEAR, I'm not here to discuss
administrations wagging the dog. Whether you believe
that either of these examples is actually a case of
wagging the dog or not, I DON'T CARE. I gave one of
each so Dem's and Rep's can both like it or not. I
don't want or care for comments about either.

My point here is about the media. And media
susceptibility to wagging the dog.

One of the more disturbing trends in media over the
past twenty years is the tendency toward narrow run
sheets. By that I mean that the number of individual
topics discussed in any broadcast or newpaper in a
given day is decreasing. Much like commercial pop
radio where they play the same songs over and over and
over again.

How many times have you turned to the CBS/ABC/NBC
nightly news and seen the first 15-20 minutes
dedicated to a single story? Worse still are the
24-hour cable news networks (yes, even FoxNews who I
love). They'll list a few different stories at the
news breaks every half hour, and then spend the entire
rest of the hour talking about only 1 or 2 stories.

This narrow focus is begging to be wagged. Pardon the
pun, of course. Narrow news coverage and focus makes
the media FAR more susceptible to media manipulation.
When you are so dedicated to the "top story of the
day", not only do you spend far too much time in
speculation with worthless pundits (of whom I hope to
be one someday), but you leave yourself with no
peripheral vision.. Does anyone else have a clear
vision of the old cartoon where a horse with blinders
has a carrot dangled in front of his face?

The upside is that few of us get our news from the
majors anymore, and those of us addicted to cable news
usually watch such while surfing blogs and news sites
online. So maybe, just maybe there is hope for the
American people, if not for the media.

Still, how sad is it when CBS has to admit, in this
regard at least, that Yahoo has better news coverage.