ABC’s World News Tonight is rebroadcast on the BBC’s news channel. I had earlier watched the CBS Evening News why Sky News retransmit. Coverage of Galloway’s evidence at the Senate committee was buried halfway through the CBS program. The World News Tonight coverage was zip, nada, nothing, silent.
Instead of actual much actual news it was even fuller with filler pieces than it usually is. So what did we get? A long piece on the anniversary of Gay Marriages in Mass with and interview with a couple there and a second interview with a couple who go married in California and then had it declared invalid so they got their money refunded. This was then rather unconvincingly linked to an op-ed piece from George Stephanopolos on how this would be affected by votes on federal judge appointments George felt might be voted on during Wednesday.
There was then a long piece on how the housing market in some godforesaken city was depressed by new building so people could not sell the houses they had already bought. Handy bit of background but hardly earth shattering when more time was given to it than all the actual news coverage.
Other non-news filling up the broadcast were the revelation that the US military had found an interactive training site on the web for insurgents to hone their targetting skills and a gee-whiz new way of treating depression involving sticking an outsized clockwork winding key next to someone’s head. Actually it was a pair of magnetic coils but that is exactly what the device looked like.
On their web site there is no coverage of Galloway’s appearance apart from a reprint of the Reuters report.
Now this may seem an extreme example but from what I could see, the gay marriages piece was probably a couple of feeds from local affiliates with a voice over, with Stephanopolos being dragged in to provide a veneer of topicality. The house price thing was their excuse for “investigative journalism” and much of the spadework had again probably been covered in a local news program selected from those sent in again by their affiliates. The health “news” was obviously mostly made up of research footage with ABC doing an interview with a couple of the trial subjects and maybe adding their graphics to demonstrate the theory. The “terrorist program” was again obviously lifted direct from a Pentagon news release or pre-prepared story.
I started to come to the conclusion that their news team consists of a couple of botoxed bimbos and a few now aging himbos being given a pretense of authority by an anchor who was too “tired and emotional” to be recruited by Turner when he set up CNN and has now survived so long he has gained the title “veteran”. The same description as the ancient cars that annually go from London to Brighton, the amazement is not at their performance but that they manage to get there at all.
