U.S. columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson on TV news:
In my lifetime, we’ve gone from all the news that’s fit to print to making any old story fit the available format. If you have an hour-long news-magazine show, stretch that unsolved murder to fill the hour. If you have a headline- news show and no real headlines, televise a car chase. Car chases are as handy as pockets to 24-hour news channels. If you have limitless footage of a bombshell Playboy bunny who dies tragically, turn up the volume. This one can’t miss.
I am not entirely unsympathetic. I have been in the news business.
I have sat before a blank computer screen in a one-person United Press International office on a Sunday and wished for news. Any old news.
On slow days, however, I never pretended that the state livestock report was a triple homicide. I could see the difference. The people reading my stories could tell the difference.
I understand that it must be a tough job to fill all that air time with stories that will captivate an insatiable audience. But with television’s amazingly lavish budgets and plenty of personnel, they could do better.