Tuesday, May 03, 2005
RUNAWAY BRIDE: TV MEDIA: 'Two categories of journalism: What we need to hear . . . [and] this stuff that pays the bills'
Source: AJC (reg needed) Great article about how the media covered the "Runaway Bride" story. AJC writer Steve Murray focuses alot of the attention on how CNN covered the story. Murray wraps up the article like this:
Whatever the next spin happens to be, Wilbanks' surprise confession exemplifies the open-ended thrills and perils of 24-hour news coverage. With the benefit of hindsight, some might say that the highly competitive news organizations threw too much coverage on the case.
But CNN senior vice president of news Sue Bunda says the network shouldn't have done things any differently.
"The police took it very seriously," she said, "and when they took it very seriously, the media played a very important role getting the information out there to the public. And then the public played a very important role."
Robert Thompson, an expert on media and pop culture at Syracuse University, said the "runaway bride" story was a classic example demonstrating that the media needs to pay its bills and knows "this kind of fare" will sell.
"There are two categories of journalism," he said. "What we need to hear as citizens, war, the economy. Then there's this other stuff that pays the bills."
He noted that in a 24-hour news cycle, stories don't have to be important, but they do have to be titillating.
"People watch CNN and Greta to satisfy the same appetite that you would by watching an episode of 'Desperate Housewives,' " Thompson said.
