Let's watch the news again!!

I watched the WCCO news team again to see what would change if I had been watching a regular nightly broadcast. As usual, the news started with its "top stories." The top story for November 13 was about a Chaska killing where Grant Everson had plotted, planned and aided in the murder of his mother. The father said, "do I hate him? No!" The camera editing then switched to a neighbor who said, "he had smoked pot. They argued." Apparently Grant was to have had a "lack of motivation." A neighbor friend of Grant's named Tom Breckeridge committed the shooting, and apparently they "were both high." The news anchor Esme Murphey said, "What's going on in kids' heads these days?" This story was about a minute and a half long, and really didn't tell us much about the story. All I knew at the end of the story was that the son had aided in planning the killing of his mother. What I want to know is why the neighborhood friend of Grant shot her? It makes me wonder what these families were like? I mean, things have to be pretty dire if a person is so unhappy and hateful that they want to kill! I wonder how they knew that these two men killed Nancy Everson? How were they caught? It is obvious that this part of the newscast left much unsaid. I don't feel like I learned anything from this story. I can't say that I believe the story, because I have not heard any evidence. Am I supposed to trust the news?
The next clip was EXTREMELY short. Apparently two sisters died in a car crash in Royalton. For the picture they showed the wheel of a tire. In fact, I think I have seen this same image before, and I wonder if it is a general picture or a picture from the actual accident. News people may have archived one good picture to give a visual image to a story, you never know...
I found out nothing else about this story. So, two sisters died whom I don't know. It did make me happy that it wasn't my sister and me. Sometimes when watching these stories you want to say "thank heavens it wasn't me!" It also made me feel sad that someone had lost family members, especially since we are reaching the holiday season. The next few seconds were about politics.
Apparently Representative Mark Olson is in jail, but it went by so quickly I couldn't tell you even why! That makes me wonder if it was on purpose. I mean these are the men who are in political power in Minnesota. Perhaps he is somebody that the owner of the news has bias against. We then get another couple-second blurb talking about how Mike Hatch got "killed in votes." I think that Hatch did very well; Hatch and Pawlenty were neck-in-neck when I went to bed. The statement that "Hatch was killed in votes was not true, and made me doubt the station a little more. Isn't the news supposed to be geared toward "reinforcing audiences' values and beliefs?" Well, it is obvious that this station is not geared toward a liberal like me. The last political story that WCCO covered was about building a Martin Luther King memorial near the spot where King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech. Other than that, I wasn't told why, and WCCO never talked about Martin Luther King. It made me think this segment was "oh looky there, they built a structure for that Martin Luther King feller." Crap! They never mentioned that he was a leader, peaceful, political or anything. Most of all, they never said why it was being built or the importance of this memorial.
There were many commercials in between these short news clips that were about 10-20 seconds long. They advertised things for the home with Menards, custom flooring and "save big money at Menards." I am sure that soon they will be changing their jingle to "new seasons greetings to you all from Menards." (it's just too far away from Christmas... I give it a week) Another commercial had a happy, upper-middle class man who was having heart failure. However, after he took specific drug he became automatically healthy. By the end of the commercial it said "don't you owe it to your family?" The next commercial was for a strong, beautiful professional woman. She was "bold" because she had a hot new car and paid for a sexy man's dry cleaning. The intention was to think if I had this car, I would have the sexy man, money, and be successful and "bold" in every situation. I think that this is a little silly, but hey, people buy into these status symbols all the time. All of a sudden the news comes back on again for a local interest story.
The story stated that Minnesotans go above and beyond the forty-hour workweek. Well, everybody except for government workers. The slip was started by a witty comment made by Esme Murphey; "most of you work harder than news anchors." The editing then switched to numerous clips of random people on Nicollet Avenue downtown Minneapolis. "How many hours do you work a week?" The pedestrian replied, "50-60 hours a week." The reporter said "don't you think that is too many?" To this the pedestrian replied, "you do what you have to do to get ahead." The editing asked a couple more people on the street and then aimed the camera up to an office window where some businessmen were having a meeting. "Late nights at the office are becoming more and more common." The editing then switched to a reporter at the Hennepin County Government Center who was yelling "hello..hello" to emphasize that the government workers aren't working these late hours. Perhaps this was a little liberal, but I am still not going to believe these news reporters. Isn't the real story why so many Minnesotans have to work so much? Perhaps the idea of the working poor should have been the angle of this story. This story really told me nothing in the minute that it was on television. I want to know why we have to work that many hours, and how we as Minnesotans can get a better wage so we don't have to work as much.
A commercial came on for the "Miracle on Ice" at the Target Center, and it is a "limited engagement." Disney also advertises for the new "Cars" movie. Wcco advertises its "project energy appeal."
The next story was about the flu. It is about how Minnesotans get the flu and was part of the good question series. The question that the reporter wanted the doctor (specialist) to answer was "what's going on in our bodies?" The reporter said, "if you live in Minnesota, you'll get it." All the editing allowed the doctor to say was "you breathe it in, it spreads, that is why all of your body aches." After that couple seconds I surely don't know any new tactics to prevent it from getting into my body so that I can stay healthy. The anchors than said something along the lines of "yeah, not looking forward to that!"
The next story said "women who eat more than 1 1/2 servings of red meat a day are twice as likely to get cancer." O.k. scare tactic, stop eating red meat ladies, unless you want to die. Of course the story never told us why it causes cancer or any evidence. It was just a "new study" put on the news to scare women.
The next segment talked about the environment, "are you energized to make change?" "Personal effort, change, savings. You can lesson the effect of global warming." Minnesota was said to have saved 3, 520 tons of gas (power). The segment wanted you to "sign up" for an energy saving program. The segment was edited to show people at a WCCO call center wanting families to call in and be a part of this energy saving group. The segment ended with "Minnesota’s can do things that others cannot do." This apparently was supposed to influence me to call this group and join as a Minnesotan. However, I don't know anything about how much energy is alot of energy. I also wondered if men who also own this energy company own the station.
There were a lot of commercials including Subway saying, "eat fresh at subway." Also SuperAmerica, "do you want great coffee?" It had a uniformed worker validating the freshness of coffee at their store.
The weather and sports ended the news. I thought that the weather introduction was a little different. The weather man said "1 in 10 are sad this time of year with all the grey and lack of sunlight." It then listed a bunch of symptoms that would indicate if you were sad. Apparently the lack of sun causes people to be sad. However, melatonin is supposed to help. He then went into a brief forecast, saying "it's going to be mild all week, in the forties." The sports contained clips from many games, playing all the best moves and comments made about the players.
I think that the local news wants you to be interested in stories that are basically about the community that we live in and being Minnesotan. I think that there is a serious lack of world news which greatly disturbs me. I feel that the local news would have the power to educate people on all sides of the issues, but there is often bias. I wish that I could believe what was being reported on the local news. However, it is basically all about the local white people in the community who have families. It seems to be geared towards middle-class and working class families. It is not geared toward the entire community, which is rich in race, class and gender. Do they ever interview successful ethnic people? I am sure that they have, but I haven't seen it. Where is the news about diversity being positive in our state? All we see is stories which are intended to scare, intimidate and coherse us into taking the upper middle-class stance. I think that I will go elsewhere to find news that I find important and valuable.