mediacomparison

      After watching an airing of the NBC Nightly News with Dan Rather and comparing this to the next day's Washington Post, I find that newspaper is far more comprehensive, news orientated, and educational.
      This half hour news program may be said to be a high tech version of the Post's front page. They share many of the same stories, each covering the presidential debate, a congressional bill allowing more foreign workers visas, Pierre Trudeau's funeral, and the conflict around the West Bank. These can all objectively be considered news that is important and pertinent to the public. The front page also resembles the TV news in the way it gives you only brief flashes of the most important news - the wide top of the inverted pyramid. There is also mention of some smaller stories included in both the TV program and the front page that are exclusive of one another. The difference is that when that program ends there is nothing more for the viewer to reference - the receive only what highlights are given to them. But, the newspaper has another 33 pages, just in the front section. This additional pages include in-depth information, analysis, editorials, and stories that fall way below TV news radar. The newspaper has more pages than TV has minutes of news, each page filled with more information than any one TV story. As Neil Postman says, the TV news simply cannot "give a decent account of the day's events in twenty-two minutes."
      To make up for it they try to create stories and images that will make them more attractive than the newspaper. The small number of facts or figures that are given on TV are given over distracting graphics of moving colors and images that keep our eye occupied as the news is flashed before us. We see footage of action, which is most easily recognizable in the form of chaos, and hear a reporter giving narration that may or may not relate to what we are seeing. In the TV coverage of Mideast violence, we see young men throwing rocks and ducking bullets, and old women wailing in the pain of grief. But, there are no two sides depicted in this conflict. We see conflict and interpret it as chaos because we are not told anything about Yasser Arafat's Palestinians or the Israelis. The details of who is fighting who and why were apparently sacrificed for the sound bite of hearing a man yell, "Cease fire? I don't know anything about a cease fire!"
      The TV news does rely heavily on the testimony of appropriate experts and likes to show that they do have journalists on site, "in the thick of it." But, they rarely have the time to hear from both sides and can never compete with the comprehensive issue exploration and back ground of the printed newspaper.
      Every story that the TV covered that the newspaper did not was a network created news story. In these cases, they did not simply report on the events as they happened. They found individuals involved and made their feelings or sentiments the news. In one story, the feelings of two individual families were used as indicators of how the public feels about each of the presidential candidates. One family, from Texas, was said to be in support of Governor George W. Bush. Their reasons for supporting Bush were given as the reasons that families would support Bush. The same was done for Gore with a family from New Jersey. This sort of generalization and assumption is created by TV's reliance on entertainment style appeal and lack of air time to present a more investigative version of events as news.
      I look over my Residence Hall Association provided copy of the Washington Post 5-6 days a week and I thoroughly read the majority of the front and metro sections about half of those times. I also read the Christian Science Monitor on-line(because I cannot afford to buy it) fairly regularly. I consider this to be the best source of national, international, and social news that I have access to. I never watch TV. The only exceptions to this are the Olympics and the baseball playoffs, if the Mets are playing. If I were to watch TV, the network news would be among the last things I'd watch. I find it to be sensational, disconnected, and misleading.

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