What Is News?
My community of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, is average in many ways, at least according to the New York City Department of Mental Health and Hygiene’s 2006 report.
This isn’t news to me.
Apparently, South Brooklyn’s residents are considered to be average, compared to the other 41 New York City neighborhoods’ residents, as far as having regular doctors, being tobacco-free, keeping healthy hearts, knowing their HIV status, getting depression help, being free of drugs and alcohol, getting necessary immunizations, making safe and healthy homes, and having healthy babies.
Interestingly, we are only below average in getting checked for cancer. This isn’t news to me, either.
Whoever reads this, I’m sorry if I anger you, but I’m not sorry for what I’ve written and what else follows in this piece. So, what is news?
On my mind is the health care crisis, one of the biggest “news” issues today though playing on my PlayStation 2 is more exciting. As I write this, a commercial on ABC Channel 7 is telling viewers to watch the news to see President Obama’s latest conference on health care, and I don’t bother to turn around because I don’t care.
Politics can bore me to tears. To be clear, politics and the way that it’s reported drive me to want to wash dishes. That’s the biggest reason for me to read the newspaper from back to front, that is, the sports section is so much more interesting.
The New York Daily News is my daily guide to the latest information on the New York Mets, the New York Yankees, and the other American and Canadian baseball teams. That’s a pun. Unfortunately, news reported on these teams isn’t always fair and balanced. Based on all of the coverage that I see from day to day, there always, unfortunately, seems to be a “bigger need” to discuss the Yankees, compared to discussing the Mets and Yankees equally.
For example, the September 11, 2009 issue of the New York Daily News showed seven pages of Yankee coverage compared to two pages of Mets coverage. Even if one team is doing better than the other, aren’t they supposed to be treated the same in a New York newspaper, you know, the one that prides itself as having “the best Yankees coverage in town”?
If you, dear readers, want to know where fair and balanced news is, the New York Daily News sports section will show you that F&B is hibernating, and may never grace us with its presence. Regarding poor news coverage, let me bring attention to a poorly covered and edited awards show, The 36th Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards.
The only word to describe the 36th Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards: Fiasco. Allow me to go back a little, please. It wouldn’t have been possible to mention this awards show, without going online, so I could find out when it is on, who’s nominated, who the presenters are and more. To do that, I had to journey to my online community, a mutt of e-mails through JacksonPosse@yahoogroups.com, and message boards through goldderby.com/forums (a Los Angeles Times-sponsored website.) On August 30, 2009, I watched this fiasco unfold at around 8 o’clock. It started with shoddy camera work.
We moved to actor Gilles Marini reading the character named Shayne Lewis, instead of the real name, of Supporting Actor in a Drama Series winner, Jeff Branson. We also had to sit through Host Vanessa Williams’ two songs, a pointless fashion show, and what felt like infinite instances of people giving out wrong facts about daytime television.
We saw them read off the winner, “The Bold And The Beautiful,” the first 30-minute soap to win Outstanding Drama Series in 30 years. It was also the show’s first win for Outstanding Drama Series in its 22-year history. What the viewers didn’t see was creator Brad Bell’s acceptance speech. The CW network, in its not-so-infinite wisdom, apparently fearing that it would go over the 10 o’clock mark, even though there were between three and four minutes to spare, decided to show an ad for one of its sponsors, American Airlines.
Even after the ad was over, and we could see the people from the show celebrating, we couldn’t get audio of the speech. No one has to wonder why the ratings for the Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards have gone done every year for a really long time. They just know the many reasons for the ratings falling fast. My community of soap opera fans, even the ones that don’t watch the show, and/or are unhappy with the decision, wondered, Why did we watch this? We watched it for the same reason why we watch the soap operas every day, and the ceremony that honors them every year. People read about the Mets and the Yankees, despite that there is an uneven amount of coverage. These things may give us chest pains, but we feel that they are newsworthy.
An article written by New York Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt needs to be mentioned: “Baseball’s Top-Secret Roster,” 08/08/09. He writes about the infamous 2003 list of steroid cheats, AKA the sluggers whom many consider to be “heroes.” He writes that he wants all of this “bad news” to go away, attention should be brought back to those in baseball with integrity, as opposed to the disgraced athletes, and people need to know if America’s pastime is full of players with a love for needles. I must say, I whole heartedly agree. People need to know if the athletes they idolize don’t play fair because they need to stop beating to death something that’s already dead.
It may be breaking the law to leak the names, but if it will make people stop talking about this over and over again, by all means, proceed! If we’re supposed to be for integrity, whether it is in baseball, journalism, and other entities, we shouldn’t continue to support those who don’t have any. Unfortunately, not everybody accepts this philosophy. These people, perhaps, are just as bad as those who lie and cheat. Exposing those with no respect for the rules is definitely newsworthy.