News Values

Posted on by blogmy2

I watched Good Morning America as I got ready on the morning of Monday, February 4. In the 15 minutes I watched, they mostly discussed flash flooding in California, Virginia governor Ralph Northam and his race scandal, and the famous people that went to Super Bowl LIII. In that same time, the Fox News show I had on in the background discussed the actual football game that was played last night, as well as Northam and a plane crash that led to a fire in California. During this time, I scrolled through my Twitter and mostly read about the Super Bowl. I then went online to see the front page of the New York Times, and its main stories were mostly about foreign policy in the US. While the stories covered by the TV programs were similar, they were quite different from the ones covered in print. My Twitter feed is skewed because of my following of many people who are sports fans or work in sports. However, I still think that this shows something important about what gets covered. TV and print people alike both want as many eyeballs as possible, but due to time constraints, the philosophy employed in TV is that sexy stories get covered to draw people in. Print has more time to flesh out its stories. Articles can be longer and more detail-focused, while packages or segments are usually short and only go over the main themes or a story. This also sees print deal with political matters that might be confusing to the average TV watcher.  

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