Watching the Local News: A Painful Experience

I just watched the 11:00 news on News Channel 12, New Jersey. First and foremost I must say that it was extremely frustrating to watch. With weather every ten minutes and commercials at about the same rate, actual news air time within the hour was severely limited. Of the remaining news time, a good chunk of it was spent on sports segments. In fact, the same sports report ran twice within the hour, and both times it took up a whole period of time from one commercial break to another. I would say that of the hour I watched News 12 New Jersey, there was about 30 minutes of actual "news".

During this time, News 12 covered 27 other stories. Some of them included: a local woman giving away prom dresses to girls who cannot afford them, a dog getting rescued from a well it fell down, a brush fire in North Bergen, children in the Head Start program planting a garden, a string of robberies at local Dunkin' Donuts chains, kittens left in a hot car in Newark which were then taken away by the Humane Society, along with many other fairly inconsequential stories. This would not have bothered me so much if it were not for the way in which they covered the few stories of consequence that they aired.

Of all the stories in the hour, I would classify only eight of them as being at least somewhat political in nature. Of those, one was a blatant photo-op for Governor Corzine, in which he read a Dr. Seuss book to children at Parkway Elementary School for Read Across America. The second was about the child welfare system in New Jersey, which in recent years has come under criticism for failing to adequately protect children. However, the story consisted of a brief mention by one anchor that a recent report says that the child welfare system in New Jersey is making progress. Another story had to address the swine flu, because what would a news segment be this week if it did not mention it? News 12 made sure to report that Governor Corzine says that we have plenty of medications stocked from the avian flu scare (which also turned out to be a lot of hype over nothing) and that New Jerseyians can rest assured that there is enough medication to go around. Here, they also reported that 60% of their viewers were concerned about the swine flu, while 40% thought the media was blowing it out of proportion. In another segment, they quickly addressed the Specter party switch. They also quickly noted that President Barack Obama chose a secretary of Health and Human Services. News 12 spent a little bit longer showing President Obama's apology for the low flying plane in Manhattan earlier this week, showing that both Governor Corzine and President Obama claim they were not informed about this photo-op. I would have linked to these stories as well, but none of them made the website as far as I can tell. News 12 reported that Governor Corzine and the Supreme Court of New Jersey were re-evaluating school funding in urban districts but did not explain what was happening at all. However, on the website, there is a link to a story which I assume explains what is happening. Unfortunately, the link does not work, so I may never know. The only politically oriented story they seemed to spend more than a minute on involved the school board elections in a "Kane In Your Corner" segment, which is a special feature of the show. The story on school board elections focused on the cost of these elections and how many citizens feel they are unnecessary and ineffective.

Overall, I did not feel any more informed after having watched the local news. I was frustrated by the lack of content, and frustrated even more by the way important stories were briefly mentioned and not explained. I was further disappointed by News 12 after viewing their website, but at this point I am not surprised. I think it is safe to say that if you want to hear about significant events and have them explained in at least some detail, you should avoid watching News 12.