Ye gawds! Can't CNN let go of the OJ trial?

[Mightmitenot]

With France attacked, police in NYC slowing down, Immigration and education under change They devote hours of air time to a 20 year old trial?

 

[Thundercrack85]

Well, they gotta do something to kill time between airplanes.

 

[KevanG]

American media is getting worse all the time. It's as bad as the tabloids spewing garbage about DNA evidence for the Jonbenet murder or Princess Di's secret children.

 

[The Question]

Yeah, news media is, for the most part, at best sub par and at worst actively harmful.

A big part of it is the fact that the news is for-profit. They're giving us the stories that sell ad space, which are not always the stories we need to hear. And what with the internet making it harder for them to monetize what they do, they're getting worse and worse about it. Some folks think or hope that the internet will inevitably give way to a new and better way of disseminating professional news stories. I'm not convinced of that, I think that it'll still require a conscious effort to bring something like that about, but regardless we are in a bit of a transitory phase where we're still trying to figure it out and everything is kind of sucky.

Nationalized news services aren't a perfect solution, but privatizing the news hasn't made news agencies any less susceptible to bribery, bias, or falsehood, and at least a public news agency would mean less sensationalist plane crap.

 

[Tempest]

Are we still calling the cable channels news? How amusing.

 

[Marvolo]

This morning my local news anchor read a report about bootleg alcohol in india killing people at some social event...off her computer...while on air. I live in North Carolina USA. How the **** is that relevant to me or anyone in my area?!

 

[Hobgoblin]

I dont mind the media looking back at the OJ trial as it was a huge story in 1995 but I would have waited until the anniversary of the verdict to do a look back. Right now the media is obsessed with the Paris terrorist attack and ignoring the massacre in Nigeria and the bombing in Colorado Springs. That's what bothers me.

 

[Schlosser85]

It's so everyone can do their "Je suis Charlie!" thing and pat themselves on the back about caring about a social issue while nobody cares about a vastly larger number of people being murdered in a place nobody cares, about.

The "Je suis Charlie" fad is just as hollow and fake as Kony 2012.

 

[kane9321]

damn cnn let it go

 

[Teelie]

They haven't been bringing it up regularly enough to need to let it go. But it is pointlessly bringing it up for a ratings grab now that it's been 20 years.

The news is now 24 hours a day with competition from the internet and other 24 hour a day news services so they have to fill those hours with something. Unfortunately it's usually completely irrelevant or worse, celebrity non-news scandals and news that outside of a geographic area is completely useless to anyone who doesn't live there.

The massacre in Nigeria is getting limited coverage though I had heard nothing of the Colorado Springs bombing.

Charles Hebdo's murder is relevant in the larger sense of the world events but the mass death by tainted alcohol in India is just a ratings grab. It's a tragic event but not one that is new or even uncommon except perhaps the number of dead is larger than usual. India is not the first nor probably last place something like that will happen in. It's also not going to spread or become an issue to anyone anywhere outside of the limited area it occured in.

 

[Hellion]

Kinda reminds me of the Winter Olympics last year. One of the stations cut into the Olympics to rehash the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding incident. Nothing but an exploitive move for ratings/views.

 

[desi900]

well