By W.T. Dixon III
I work for a living, as does my wife. We are new parents to a beautiful 15 week old girl. If we can catch a breath between re-heating leftovers and bottles and watching re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond, we occasionally tune into the broadcast and cable news channels to see what’s going on outside our little world of spit-up and paychecks.
Last night, I was appalled by what was considered newsworthy by most every talking head out there (conservative or liberal, it didn’t matter). The Duke rape case is hardly worthy of the national attention it’s received. This is a case that deserves some local and campus level coverage, and that’s it.
Bill Bennett was even devoting airtime to the event this morning on his radio show. Pardon me, but why does this merit national attention?
Every rape allegation is tragic, either because it’s true, or because it’s not. But rape allegations are routine, like house fires and murders.
Recently in our hometown, there was a fire that killed some children (tragic, of course). We are a big media market (16th largest in the country), and I was arguing last week that this story belonged in the local section of the paper(instead of on page one, above the fold). How does it look to out-of-towners traveling to our beloved city that we devote such coverage to a flipping fire?
I’m a little old school when it comes to all of this touchy feely local interest stuff in our media. I was a journalism major in college. We were trained to follow an “inverted pyramid” when it came to writing news articles (important details first, less relevant details last). If only the editors of our newspapers and news programming would follow such rules, especially when it comes to deciding which stories are relevant. One friend of mine, who is apolitical, jokes that the local news is all bad news except for the final story which, he jokes (not entirely inaccurately), “is always about some a-hole petting a duck.”
Do these national guys get all their cues from Drudge or “News of the Weird?”
Can we talk about terror? Iraq? Iran? North Korea? Rumsfeld? Bush? Something relevant? But let’s focus our attention on what really concerns America. This Duke rape case is simple. Either these guys did it, or they didn’t. Why do we care? Same with Kobe and Natalie Holloway.
When I was in college (1992-1996), there was an alleged rape that took place my freshman year. It made the college newspaper, but there was no hint of it in the local press. Let’s stop obsessing about Duke when we should be obsessing about things that affect our lives, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. Namely terror and the economy.
I work for a living, as does my wife. We are new parents to a beautiful 15 week old girl. If we can catch a breath between re-heating leftovers and bottles and watching re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond, we occasionally tune into the broadcast and cable news channels to see what’s going on outside our little world of spit-up and paychecks.
Last night, I was appalled by what was considered newsworthy by most every talking head out there (conservative or liberal, it didn’t matter). The Duke rape case is hardly worthy of the national attention it’s received. This is a case that deserves some local and campus level coverage, and that’s it.
Bill Bennett was even devoting airtime to the event this morning on his radio show. Pardon me, but why does this merit national attention?
Every rape allegation is tragic, either because it’s true, or because it’s not. But rape allegations are routine, like house fires and murders.
Recently in our hometown, there was a fire that killed some children (tragic, of course). We are a big media market (16th largest in the country), and I was arguing last week that this story belonged in the local section of the paper(instead of on page one, above the fold). How does it look to out-of-towners traveling to our beloved city that we devote such coverage to a flipping fire?
I’m a little old school when it comes to all of this touchy feely local interest stuff in our media. I was a journalism major in college. We were trained to follow an “inverted pyramid” when it came to writing news articles (important details first, less relevant details last). If only the editors of our newspapers and news programming would follow such rules, especially when it comes to deciding which stories are relevant. One friend of mine, who is apolitical, jokes that the local news is all bad news except for the final story which, he jokes (not entirely inaccurately), “is always about some a-hole petting a duck.”
Do these national guys get all their cues from Drudge or “News of the Weird?”
Can we talk about terror? Iraq? Iran? North Korea? Rumsfeld? Bush? Something relevant? But let’s focus our attention on what really concerns America. This Duke rape case is simple. Either these guys did it, or they didn’t. Why do we care? Same with Kobe and Natalie Holloway.
When I was in college (1992-1996), there was an alleged rape that took place my freshman year. It made the college newspaper, but there was no hint of it in the local press. Let’s stop obsessing about Duke when we should be obsessing about things that affect our lives, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. Namely terror and the economy.
This post first appeared on The Bully Pulpit! - Fanning The Winds Of Freedom!, please read the originial post: here
