Before this assignment I had never studied news coverage before, like I did now.
Studying the news that is put out by different news media's is just incredible,
because in each type of news service, they are different. The Headlines are
usually close to one another but they are not always the exact same. Take the
headline for Monday October 19, 1999, CNN Headline News uses "New North
Carolina flooding feared", while the MSNBC News Headlines are
"Clinton, GOP in budget showdown", and lastly Lycos News used
"Computers that Read Your Shifting Moods." Although none of these
headline stories are the same, we see what different media outlets believe their
headline stories are! I choose three different media outlets they were CNN
Headline News, MSNBC Headline News, and one of the search engines Lycos News.
The reason why I picked these three different media's is because I thought that
they were going to be the most diverse, and the most similar. Because I picked
two big media outlets, MSNBC, and CNN Headline News, I thought that these two
would probably be closer too each other than Lycos News. The reason why is
because each of those two outlets have people everywhere, in the White House, in
Bosnia, where ever there is a story they will send people to go. While Lycos is
not as dominant as the other two are, I wanted to see how big Lycos really is
compared in news coverage. As I said earlier the first report on CNN Headline
News was Flooding in North Carolina, the way that CNN had reported this was by
two news anchors and a reporter in North Carolina. Because of the time usage of
that particular story I as well as other could not believe how big of a story it
was. I thought that it was going to be the top story everywhere. I was wrong
because MSNBC did not agree with me, because their first story dealt with
President Clinton vetoing a 12.6 billion-dollar foreign aid bill. The way MSNBC
covered this was by having a reporter in the White House with a Republican as
his speaker, and this interview got to be real boring, and not to long. Lycos on
the other hand decided that their best story was Computers that read your
shifting moods. Lycos decided to send a female reporter Megan Watzke to
Cambridge, Massachusetts and report for them. Luckily this news was not on TV
because if it were I would have turned it off. MSNBC decided that the flood in
North Carolina was there second top story. Although they gave the flood in North
Carolina a good amount of network time, it did not seem as good as CNN's report,
because they did not have a reporter in North Carolina to really give us an
understanding of the area. CNN's next top story was Wary Wall Street eyes
earnings reports, this story is a story for the Wall Street businessmen, using
the Dow components and earning reports to show that maybe today on wall street
might be another rocky ride in the market. CNN also used different people to
talk about different markets, like the international and the US market. This
type of story is for that six in the morning person who always wakes up and is
about to get on the train and go to the Mercantile Exchange. Lycos uses a
different headline to talk about the same issue as CNN; they use "Crash of
'87 Haunts Traders." This story is the mostly the same story as the one on
CNN except Lycos goes further back into 1987 and tells more about what happened
there. The third top story for MSNBC is "Pakistan leader reaches out to
India." Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Sunday that
he had ordered a unilateral pull back of troops along the nations disputed
borders. Now the only reason why I listened is because in politics class we have
discussed India and many things about it, but other than that I really do not
care for it. CNN Headline news also reported the same thing for their third
story; "Pakistan begins withdrawal from Indian border." I believe that
I saw the same type of coverage on both CNN, and also on MSNBC. Both channels
used similar pictures and also very simple word choice to describe the situation
at hand in Pakistan. Lycos on the other hand decided that "US Crime Rate
Keeps Sliding," was their third top story. I really like this story because
it had said that the murder rate had dropped to the lowest point in thirty-one
years. The coverage that they had used on this story was not much; it was about
a page at the longest. Though the information that they covered was about the
previous highs and lows of the crime rate, and what this means for the future.
Lycos decided to use this headline for their fourth news story; "Hurricane
Irene Swamps North Carolina." The information in this story was just about
the same information that I had heard in the other reports from CNN, and MSNBC.
The only difference is the way that his story had been chosen. The other media
outlets had believed that this was a far bigger story than say "Computers
that read your shifting moods." CNN Headline News decided to go back to
North Carolina and talk to one of the reporters that was their, and try to get a
better understanding of what was going on at that current time. I actually
started loosing interest in the news at that point because they had just
discussed it as their headline story, and now they are going back to it. MSNBC
choose "Americans confident in military," for their fourth story. This
story dealt with the concept of whether or not American troops should be used as
peacekeepers in far distant countries. At one point in the story they went to a
reporter who was at some Army base, and interviewed a wife of a soldier in the
Army. It was nice to see the reaction from her and how she thought her husband
felt about the issue. I really like how NBC went out there to hear the reaction
from someone who might know better about the issue than us. MSNBC used this
headline as its fifth headline "U.S. seeks to renegotiate ABM treaty."
MSNBC had a reporter in Russia to discuss this treaty. President Clinton and his
administration are offering to help complete a large missile tracking radar, if
it agrees to alterations to the ABM Treaty to allow an U.S. missile-defense
system. What amazed me was that they had a reporter at the White House at first,
and then they moved on to another reporter in Russia. Lycos used the headline
"US Upbeat on Pakistan." This article was on the same grounds as the
reports on TV were, it discussed what was going on their, and also reported that
troops that were sent to the border during a confrontation over the Kargil
mountains this summer in Kashmir were being withdrawn. No other newscast had
reported that, and I felt it quite interesting that Lycos out of them all would
be the one to report it. CNN turned their headlines to Clinton, not Bill but
Hillary. "Hillary Clinton: Probably no announcement till 2000" this
was the headline for CNN's fifth story, again they used a reporter from the
White House to discuss what Hillary's chances are of running for senate. As the
reporter said, he believes that Hillary will run but she said that she would
make no comment about it till the year 2000. I have taken three types of news
media outlets and broke them down into different parts. I have discussed what
was chosen; the number it was put on air, and many other things about news
media. Although this essay was one of the hardest that I have written, I have
learned a lot about different types of news, why some news is put on before, and
I also got to watch TV. Since the year 2000 is coming up, and plus we have
election in the year 2000, the news is going to play a crucial part in the
election for a President.