News Evaluation and Breakdown

For this post, I watched the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams online.
Here is the breakdown of the report:

1. Mozy pro commercial-30 seconds

2. Pacific Coast Drama- 2:54- the rumor that a missile lit up the sky around LA is examined and an interview with a missile expert reveals that it was probably just an airplane creating an optical illusion in the sky. The FAA reveals that it had no radar indication of a fast moving object on the day of the missile sighting. A traffic helicopter filmed the initial sighting.

3. Allstate commercial 16 seconds

4. Stranded at Sea- 2:25- a Carnival cruise liner is stuck out at sea after a fire disabled one of the main engines on the ship. The crew and customers were left without electricity, running water, and toilet use (although the crew has got these running again)relying on airlifted supplies to be brought to them. The enormous ship must be towed by tugboat to Mexico.

5. Obama visits Indonesia-3:02- this has been the President's third attempt to visit Jakarta, but the area's volcano has been spewing ash and delaying his visit. Obama lived in Jakarta for four years, so the trip was spent politically trying to build bridges between the U.S. and Indonesia and visiting old friends and teachers.

6. Merrill Lynch commercial- 15 seconds

7. Interview with one of Obama's Indonesian teachers- 2:43- Obama's teacher reveals that he was a very bright, good humored, and chubby kid, and that he did not recognize him when he ran for the Illinois senate seat until he smiled. The man also remarked that the president doesn't just take care of the U.S., but the whole world, and that is something people don't understand. His last remark was that he hoped the president would be more relaxed and happy the next time they met.

8. Trend Micro Commercial- 13 seconds

9. Cholera outbreak in Haiti- 23 seconds- all this said was that cholera has spread to Port au Prince, and that is very bad news.

10. Bush's Book release- 2:41- George Bush is at a Borders signing his book and segments of a longer interview are shown. Clips include Bush saying that water boarding is not torture because a lawyer told him it was not, Kanye West thinks he's a racist and that is not appropriate, he quit drinking at 40, and he was with his mother, Barbra Bush, when she miscarried and showed him the fetus. He thinks that may be where some of his Pro-Life sentiments stem from.

11. Merrill Lynch commercial- 15 seconds

12. Steven Hayes receives the death penalty-1:02-6 members of the Steven Hayes trial discuss what it was like handing down the death penalty as a sentence. One juror said, on the Today Show, that it was a "tool the founding fathers gave us to use when we saw fit, and this man is not capable of producing anything positive for society."

13. NYC Chancellor of Schools leaves-18 seconds- He is stepping down to change his career to the corporate world.

14. Achievement Gap Report-2:24- the report discusses how Black male students significantly under perform on standardized tests, how family and socio-economic features add to the stats, and how charter schools aimed at Black male students are trying to close the gap. 50% of Black males graduate from public high schools and 5% of college students are black males.

15. Merrill Lynch- 15 seconds

16. Mr. Goodwrench Gone- 27 seconds- The longstanding GM "mascot" will discontinue this year.

17. Mr. Peanut Speaks- 25 seconds- Mr. Peanut, the Planter's Peanut mascot, has not spoken for decades, but is now voiced by Robert Downey Jr.

18. The Great American Clothes Swap- 2:11- This is an "Apparel Diet" that several women in CA are now a part of. They clean out their closets and examine what clothes they already have, make outfits from them, and vow to stop shopping for a month. The women also meet to swap clothes to give themselves a variety by recycling instead of consuming. A shopping expert says that, in order to be a smart shopper, you need to have a budget, a buddy, and a stopwatch.

19. Mozy commercial- 30 seconds

20. Perils of Apparel Diet (my title)-1:50- loads of retailers and other women were made about the clothes club's mission. The leader reminds women that you already are fabulous.

21. 6 Items or Less- 1:50- a woman who started a similar club speaks about how she only wore 6 items for a month and learned how to accessorize with those things instead of continually buying new things. She gained followers and media attention by using Facebook and Twitter as connection services.

22. Cadillac commercial-16 seconds

23. Consumer's love debt- 1:46- A woman who works with women who spend too much on clothes talks about the American trend for overspending and accruing debt.

First off, I would like to comment on how hard it is to find a news broadcast to watch online that isn't the Colbert Report or Daily Show. I do not have TV in my house, and watch most of my media on my computer and just use our television to watch movies and what not on Netflix. It took me a long time to find a news source that wasn't just snippets of previous programs. There also seems to exist a "privileged" news media. In the show I watched, there were extra segments you could watch after the program labeled "web only." For instance, one of these clips was a longer segment of the Bush interview which revealed why part of the clip was filmed in a church- because that's where Bush and Laura got married, and his faith helped him quit drinking. The majority of the other "web only" clips were from the program's British constituents featuring British reporters.

In terms of content, I was not very unimpressed. After watching, I do not feel that I know anything that is pressing in the world. There was no update about what is going on in Afghanistan, how the gulf clean-up is going, ANY mention of the economy etc. I thought that most of the program was fluff. Perhaps that is what the Nightly News program is, but I just assumed it would be more informative! Also, several of the news stories that I thought were most important were only seconds long! The cholera outbreak in Haiti only received 23 seconds of airtime, but this is an issue that will have devastating effects on the country. Meanwhile, the program spent the greatest amount of time on upper-middle class white women who have decided to cut back on spending money on clothes. That story got 5:01! Not to sound like a curmudgeon, I am happy for those ladies, but I don't really care. Something that I do care about- the achievement gap report- only got 2:24 of airtime. I think that is unacceptable, and is one of the major reasons I stopped watching the news in the first place.

Activity:
To really highlight this issue of misinformation, I would like to introduce my students to different news sources. Providing my students with a frame of reference for what other countries, people, and cultures deem "news worthy." After stumbling around the internet, I found this neat site which I would like to use in the classroom. I would break students to groups in which they would be assigned to one of the news sources. Each group would watch and take notes on 10 minutes of news and then return to the larger group and share their findings.