The tabloid web?
Slate’s Jack Shafer looks at some of the more tabloidish stories that have appeared on cable news channel websites…
Although any story featuring sex, violence, death, or dismemberment can qualify a news story for heavy promotion on a cable channel Web site, nothing satisfies the sites like an endangered baby. If an infant or a toddler anywhere in the world has been harmed or placed in peril, the story is a safe bet to be featured by one of the Web tabloids. If the baby has suffered a gruesome injury or is rotting dead, it’s a cinch, as Foxnews.com’s “Manhunt After Infant Found Dead Near Car” and similar stories by the competition demonstrate.
If the wires fail to produce a baby-in-a-microwave story, the Web tabs are happy to fill the depravity gap by substituting accounts about slightly older children imperiled by sex monsters. In the past two days, Foxnews.com has promo’d both “Kindergartener Accuses 2 Classmates of Sex Assault” and “Elementary School Principal Charged in Sexual Assault.”
I have always wondered if I was the only one who thought this was the case.
Comment by Dead Air — January 31, 2008 @ 4:36 pm
I for one appreciate Fox keeping us informed especially about the sex predators, the Hollaway case and other crimes…I am fed up with politics and any news other than that is so welcome in my world.
Comment by Gayle — January 31, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
I’m a news junky who totally agrees with you. What’s happened to real journalism? 24 hour news channels take a tiny sound bite and discuss for 10 minutes, an ap wire story and discuss that for 15 minutes. When they’ve filled an hour, they repeat. There are so many stories out there, so many questions to be answered, but no one seems willing to do the leg work to feed this news junky’s habit! But every channel can fill 15 minutes an hour discussing whether or not a photo shows that Obama snubbed Clinton at the SOTU!
Comment by Jeri — February 1, 2008 @ 12:03 am
Its not just the news websites, its the news channels. The covering of tragedy TV is distracting us from the issues IMO.
Comment by Paco — February 1, 2008 @ 7:13 am