THE NEWS Essay, Research Paper

THE NEWS

Before this assignment I had never studied news coverage before, like I did now.

Studying the news that is put out by different news media’s is just incredible, because in each type of news service, they are different. The Headlines are usually close to one another but they are not always the exact same. Take the headline for Monday October 19, 1999, CNN Headline News uses “New North Carolina flooding feared”, while the MSNBC News Headlines are “Clinton, GOP in budget showdown”, and lastly Lycos News used “Computers that Read Your Shifting Moods.” Although none of these headline stories are the same, we see what different media outlets believe their headline stories are! I choose three different media outlets they were CNN Headline News, MSNBC Headline News, and one of the search engines Lycos News. The reason why I picked these three different media’s is because I thought that they were going to be the most diverse, and the most similar. Because I picked two big media outlets, MSNBC, and CNN Headline News, I thought that these two would probably be closer too each other than Lycos News. The reason why is because each of those two outlets have people everywhere, in the White House, in Bosnia, where ever there is a story they will send people to go. While Lycos is not as dominant as the other two are, I wanted to see how big Lycos really is compared in news coverage.

As I said earlier the first report on CNN Headline News was Flooding in North Carolina, the way that CNN had reported this was by two news anchors and a reporter in North Carolina. Because of the time usage of that particular story I as well as other could not believe how big of a story it was. I thought that it was going to be the top story everywhere. I was wrong because MSNBC did not agree with me, because their first story dealt with President Clinton vetoing a 12.6 billion-dollar foreign aid bill. The way MSNBC covered this was by having a reporter in the White House with a Republican as his speaker, and this interview got to be real boring, and not to long. Lycos on the other hand decided that their best story was Computers that read your shifting moods. Lycos decided to send a female reporter Megan Watzke to Cambridge, Massachusetts and report for them. Luckily this news was not on TV because if it were I would have turned it off.

MSNBC decided that the flood in North Carolina was there second top story. Although they gave the flood in North Carolina a good amount of network time, it did not seem as good as CNN’s report, because they did not have a reporter in North Carolina to really give us an understanding of the area. CNN’s next top story was Wary Wall Street eyes earnings reports, this story is a story for the Wall Street businessmen, using the Dow components and earning reports to show that maybe today on wall street might be another rocky ride in the market. CNN also used different people to talk about different markets, like the international and the US market. This type of story is for that six in the morning person who always wakes up and is about to get on the train and go to the Mercantile Exchange. Lycos uses a different headline to talk about the same issue as CNN; they use “Crash of ‘87 Haunts Traders.” This story is the mostly the same story as the one on CNN except Lycos goes further back into 1987 and tells more about what happened there.

The third top story for MSNBC is “Pakistan leader reaches out to India.” Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Sunday that he had ordered a unilateral pull back of troops along the nations disputed borders. Now the only reason why I listened is because in politics class we have discussed India and many things about it, but other than that I really do not care for it. CNN Headline news also reported the same thing for their third story; “Pakistan begins withdrawal from Indian border.” I believe that I saw the same type of coverage on both CNN, and also on MSNBC. Both channels used similar pictures and also very simple word choice to describe the situation at hand in Pakistan. Lycos on the other hand decided that “US Crime Rate Keeps Sliding,” was their third top story. I really like this story because it had said that the murder rate had dropped to the lowest point in thirty-one years. The coverage that they had used on this story was not much; it was about a page at the longest. Though the information that they covered was about the previous highs and lows of the crime rate, and what this means for the future.

Lycos decided to use this headline for their fourth news story; “Hurricane Irene Swamps North Carolina.” The information in this story was just about the same information that I had heard in the other reports from CNN, and MSNBC. The only difference is the way that his story had been chosen. The other media outlets had believed that this was a far bigger story than say “Computers that read your shifting moods.” CNN Headline News decided to go back to North Carolina and talk to one of the reporters that was their, and try to get a better understanding of what was going on at that current time. I actually started loosing interest in the news at that point because they had just discussed it as their headline story, and now they are going back to it. MSNBC choose “Americans confident in military,” for their fourth story. This story dealt with the concept of whether or not American troops should be used as peacekeepers in far distant countries. At one point in the story they went to a reporter who was at some Army base, and interviewed a wife of a soldier in the Army. It was nice to see the reaction from her and how she thought her husband felt about the issue. I really like how NBC went out there to hear the reaction from someone who might know better about the issue than us.

MSNBC used this headline as its fifth headline “U.S. seeks to renegotiate ABM treaty.” MSNBC had a reporter in Russia to discuss this treaty. President Clinton and his administration are offering to help complete a large missile tracking radar, if it agrees to alterations to the ABM Treaty to allow an U.S. missile-defense system. What amazed me was that they had a reporter at the White House at first, and then they moved on to another reporter in Russia. Lycos used the headline “US Upbeat on Pakistan.” This article was on the same grounds as the reports on TV were, it discussed what was going on their, and also reported that troops that were sent to the border during a confrontation over the Kargil mountains this summer in Kashmir were being withdrawn. No other newscast had reported that, and I felt it quite interesting that Lycos out of them all would be the one to report it. CNN turned their headlines to Clinton, not Bill but Hillary. “Hillary Clinton: Probably no announcement till 2000″ this was the headline for CNN’s fifth story, again they used a reporter from the White House to discuss what Hillary’s chances are of running for senate. As the reporter said, he believes that Hillary will run but she said that she would make no comment about it till the year 2000.

I have taken three types of news media outlets and broke them down into different parts. I have discussed what was chosen; the number it was put on air, and many other things about news media. Although this essay was one of the hardest that I have written, I have learned a lot about different types of news, why some news is put on before, and I also got to watch TV. Since the year 2000 is coming up, and plus we have election in the year 2000, the news is going to play a crucial part in the election for a President.