Here in Austin, a women hit and killed a pedestrian. The woman left the scene, but was later apprehended and charged. Here’s the story.
I’m not here to talk about the incident itself, but rather the reporting of the incident.
The local news is making a big to-do out of this because of the woman’s job: she’s a staffer for a Texas State Representative.
Why are we supposed to care about this? Why is her day job something to focus on? Why does that make this more newsworthy than other hit-and-runs? Is it because she’s young, pretty, and blonde? The news media does suffer from “pretty white girl syndrome“. Is it because she works for a Republican and the liberal news media wants to try to draw some sort of evil connection?
If this woman worked as a garbage collector, would they care? even if her boss was a Republican?
Can someone please tell me why this angle of reporting? Why is it newsworthy? Why does it matter?
Or is it just their bias showing through?
Stuff From Hsoi 
because it reflects on the rep – the type of people you hire
Certainly. But then why aren’t we caring about the sort of trash collectors we hire? Why isn’t it newsworthy what cashiers at McDonald’s are being hired?
There’s no such thing as good or decent journalism any longer. It’s all Yellow journalism now and reporters are looked upon in the same vein as used car salesmen, politicians, and lawyers. They did it to themselves quite well and quite fast. And yes, all those groups have many decent folks in them I know. But the stereotype that comes to mind when the group is mentioned is unfortunate and usually earned.
I think you are right Groundhog. Even the courts agree that ‘news’ is just another form of entertainment. It doesn’t have to be true!
FOX News/Monsanto scandal re: Bovine Growth Hormone: This clip is taken from the brilliant doc film, The Corporation. It focuses on two FOX News whistle blowers.
Yup. The main problem is when we went to 24-hour formats, because you need to fill the time with something…. so gotta keep talking and keep finding ways to get people to tune in. Unfortunately the technique is to appeal to the seedy underbelly.
Anyways, this story just bugged me because I follow some local news on Twitter and watching the frequency of their updates regarding this story and how learning this woman’s job was “breaking news” and how their “coverage” was more focused on her job affiliation than the tragedy of a woman losing her life… well, shows you where their priorities are. *sigh*