TV News Log

I streamed the November 8th Kare11 ten-o'clock newscast. Here is the log of the program:
Introductions (Oil prices hit highs, human sex-trafficking, and a car-deer collision) 30 seconds
Car-Deer Collision (Out-state news) 2:13
Sex Trafficking Arrests (Metro News) 2:17
Man released from jail, suing Toyota (Metro News) 0:27
Governor's Race (State News) 0:27
Gas Prices hit high (National News) 0:27
Coming up: Weather, Vikings win. 0:15
Also coming up as a Kare 11 Extra, a heart defect issue (Health) 0:13
Heart Defect, in anchor's family. (Health) 6:40
Weatherwoman thanking anchor for sharing the heart story 0:20
Weather 2:15
Tomorrow Night: Increased use at food shelf's 0:25
Coming up: Sports 0:15
Reminder: Phone number for heart clinic 0:10
Story on Vikings and Childress (Sports) 0:43
Gopher Basketball team finishes exhibition season (Sports) 0:29
Athletes of the Week (Sports) 2:00
Middle School football team does a trick play (Sports) 0:36
Before we go: Queen gets a Facebook (Entertainment) 0:37

News topics received 5:44. Out of these topics there was "news" from around the state and nation. But out of that news, only two stories (governor's race and gas prices) have an actually effect on myself or anyone else not personally involved in the story. They are there to entertain through emotional tactics (car-deer incident), crime (sex-trafficking) and also revenge (Toyota being sued). Sports topics got 5:13. The sports portion was all local/state sports with a range from professional all the way down to Middle School, with the largest allotment for prep sports which the majority of sports fans would not really care about. Weather got 2:15 seconds, it was mostly local weather with a little bit of a mention of other areas, with the reason being it will be coming our direction. Health Features took up the majority of the news cast at 6:40. This story was one of the most personally you will get on the news as the head anchor interviewed his wife and family about the illness. Intros, Coming ups and Tommorrows got 1:23 seconds. These didn't tell anything of any value but are used as a hook to get you to stay tuned or watch tomorrow. Entertainment came in with 37 seconds, thanks to the Queen of England getting a Facebook page.

As I do not have cable, I do not watch television news often. I get my news from reading online news sites and actually streaming The Daily Show. The nightly news is geared towards older people. The stories are never anything near breaking news. (I heard about the Queen getting a Facebook over a week ago. I didn't care then, and I still don't.) They are all moderate, relatively conservative minded. Show the police doing good work busting up the sex-trafficking, but then do not talk more about the man released from prison because his case was overruled. They do not want to anger anyone by pointing out a flaw like that in the judicial system, because people want to think that the system in place is always perfect. The health feature didn't really pertain to a very vast audience. The disease has no visible signs, so it does not cause any real warnings. You can get tested to see if you are at risk, but they do not make any mention of the high cost the testing must be because that would get to close to an issue of a lack of universal healthcare. As I mentioned before, the sports section showed a bit of all levels. But if you were a sports fan, you would have known the day before that the Vikings won, probably would not care too much about an exhibition basketball game against a Division 2 school. Since I watched the newscast online, I did not see any ads.

Teaching Activity: For my teaching activity, I would have students do a similar task. They would first watch and keep a log of a local nightly newscast. However, they would also watch a national news show from Fox News and one from MSNBC. The key would be to have all three shows air on the same day. After writing out what topics are covered, and the different stories in the topics, I would have the students engage in a dialogue about what stories are being covered by what stations. Is there any bias? Is there a reason for the different views given?