I like to keep up with the news, to hear what’s happening in different parts of the world. Keeping up with current events is one of the things I miss while I’m traveling. From experience, it’s difficult to keep abreast of current affairs in parts of Australia. Their news tends to mostly relate to whatever state you’re in. They don’t think New Zealand news is important. In America, it’s impossible. I’m convinced that the news people don’t know there is a New Zealand or Australia. The only way to learn what’s happening in the world is to tap into the Internet, or at least that’s what we do when we’re visiting the US.
In New Zealand our news coverage is broad in all medias—television, radio and newspaper. I generally know what’s going on in different parts of the world.
Just recently, I’ve noticed a trend, particularly with our television news. They sensationalize everything, in some cases making mountains out of things that are mere hills. Two cases in point.
Like the rest of the world, swine fever has been a big story down here. We had several groups of Auckland students who spent their school holidays in Mexico. They developed symptoms, were isolated fairly quickly on their return to NZ and given treatment. I thought our health ministry handled everything pretty well, the students, their families and others who were showing symptoms were put in isolation and monitored closely.
We’ve been lucky in New Zealand since we haven’t had any deaths and everyone has recovered. Anyone listening to the news coverage after the story broke would have thought all the students were a gasp away from death and the pandemic would be halfway across Auckland by the next day. Despite officials coming out with strong statements, telling of their progress and what they intended to do, the news coverage was scaremongering, plain and simple. I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
The second thing that happened was a shooting. A policeman was killed and others injured by a gunman who holed up in his house. The armed defenders were out, neighbors were evacuated and the press went overboard. Yes, it was a serious situation, but several of the things the press reported during the day were incorrect. I can see that news is big business these days. It’s a race to see who can get stories out to the public first, but it would make me happier if the gloom and doom reports were reserved for matters where the world really was going to end.
Lately I’ve been watching the headlines and leaving it at that. I don’t need to listen to the scaremongering from our reporters.
How do you keep up with the news? If you live in Australia or the US, am I being unfair about your parochial news coverage? Do you think, like me, that sometimes the news coverage is heavy on the scaremongering? What say you about news?
Look for the blog participation winner announcement later today. Oh, my newsletter contest winner announcement as well. I ran out of time today, but on the plus side, my website is looking more up to date. Check out my new covers for Make That Man Mine and Lynx to the Pharaoh plus details and an excerpt for CatNap, the next story in my Middlemarch series. I also have a new free short story for you to download.
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May 12th, 2009 at 5:09 am · Link
Hey Shelley,
I say the news personally sucks for me. I stopped watching it about 3 months ago. I was hooked on the news couldn’t get enough. Almost lived for the doom and gloom. I woke up one morning and started reading my TBR pile and never looked back. I still listen for about 15 minutes of our local news at night but that is about it. Personally after I stopped watching, I really started feeling a lot better. Have a great day.
May 12th, 2009 at 6:54 am · Link
Hi Shelley,
I agree with you about the news trend… Here in Finland our news have been great, we get to know the major news worldwide (sometimes even more than what’s happening in our own small country) but nowadays it’s to much scaremongering here too. I’m more for reading the newspaper now…
May 12th, 2009 at 8:50 am · Link
My husband and I can be news junkies. We watch one news show at 10:00, switch to the other station at 11:00, and then go on to the local news at 11:30. The 10:00 news is from a liberal station, and the 11:00 news is from a conservative station, and it’s interesting to see what gets on each network, what is left off, and if they both run the same story, what slant they give it.
We sometimes skip the news altogether and watch a movie. It all depends!
In Canada we get a very good world overview, but it comes down to whatever stories the networks think are worth doing for their particular viewers. We don’t get a lot of New Zealand news here in Canada, as I’m sure you never hear about Canada.
May 12th, 2009 at 10:24 am · Link
Hi Shelley– now that I’m back from being MIA– I can say that you are really right here– since I work in media I can vouch for it being true… And that’s all I’m sayin…
May 12th, 2009 at 12:47 pm · Link
Roberta – I know what you mean. Some days I’ve started skipping the news to, but then I start to wonder what I’m missing. I try to at least catch the headlines of the evening news. At least our coverage of the recession hasn’t been too bad. Yes, the news is bad, but the coverage has seemed balanced in this area.
Eva – I think we do news well in small countries. I like the range of news we receive. Now if only they’d stop this new trend. It’s like they feel they have to grab our attention and scare us half to death…
Julia – actually, we do hear about Canda sometimes. It’s usually political news that we hear.
Kaye – ah, so I’m not imagining things!
May 12th, 2009 at 2:53 pm · Link
I can overdose on the news, and let it get to me. It does seem like everything gets blown up, and talked about until you are sick of hearing about it.
Our local news can shut down all the shows during the day to give you minute to minute coverage on the 1 inch of snow the nearest city is getting. Cracks me up, because nothing is said about the 3 ft of snow I have up in the mountains.
I love msn news feeder. I can scroll the hot topics and only open them if I want to. Saves me time and if I don’t want to hear depressing news I have a choice.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:41 pm · Link
I hate the news. We stopped getting our local paper because they never tell us any national news let alone international news. Also the TV news is crap now. Like you if I want news I go online and look. Blah.
Oh and you’re such a evil tease.
Hugs!
May 12th, 2009 at 9:54 pm · Link
I’m pretty awful about staying current, actually–we no longer get the local daily paper and I don’t watch TV news. I don’t enjoy the negative bombardment. I tend to get the headlines from NPR in the car (National Public Radio) or whatever I chance upon while surfing. Generally that’s enough, and my husband will fill me in on any big news items I may have missed :)
May 13th, 2009 at 12:51 am · Link
Count me in on the scaremongering aspect of the swine flu outbreak. It’s like the press are gagging for major panic attacks. As for the NZ shooting, that was horrific on a personal level as a very good friend of mine was personally affected. And yeah, the online news covering that event just appeared to make stuff up on a whim.