CNN Headline News
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.