Too much of a good thing - News and media coverage is trivialized "in the wake of Sept. 11

This summer I was able to do something I rarely have time for during the year: I watched TV. A couple of weeks into this cathartic experience, though, I realized I was doing a lot more channel flipping than channel watching. Despite my mother's contentions, I think this had less to do with an acute compulsive behavior and more to do with the dearth of worthwhile content on TV.

This is no more apparent than on America's news networks. These 24-hour, non-stop information distributors are filling the airwaves with updates and breaking news -- or so they claim.

It could've been just a slow couple of months, but MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News, CNN and all the other networks seem to have run out of material. So they have resorted to making news where it really doesn't exist. The stories I was following this summer didn't really cry out "newsworthy." Actually, that's not totally true. I think there was just as much "news" this summer as there was immediately after 9/11, or maybe more.

The difference is now the networks have to go out and find it. But instead of solid coverage, the media has become all too prone to the fantastic and sensationalistic. As with the recent kidnapping coverage this past summer, all too similar to the shark attack media-fest of last year, so-called news programs seem willing to do anything for a Nielson rating. As a case in point, the actual number of kidnappings in the U.S. is down in the last decade, and the chances of a swimmer being attacked by a shark remain strikingly low compared to the risk one takes driving a car.

So instead of reporting on the real news that is happening, they are making "news shows." Yet by doing so, the news media is missing the point. Eventually, events stop happening "in the wake of Sept. 11." Yet by continually playing to the sensation of it all, they run the risk of desensitizing the public to the importance of the events on which they are reporting. Perhaps this began when programs like the "NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw" decided the person who read the news was as important as what he was reading, even if he didn't happen to be there that night as that omniscient narrator proclaims "with Brian Williams filling in."

This phenomenon seems to be gripping the nation. MSNBC recently brought Phil Donahue back after being cryogenically frozen for the last decade. Or was that Ted Williams? CNN is keeping pace, though, as they are marketing the re-emergence of Connie Chung onto the scene. This career renewal must have been sparked by her interview success with the intimidating Gary Condit, which may be more a testament to her courage than reporting skills. Seemingly, she was the only one brave enough to sit in the same room as the suspected murderer of his former intern, Chandra Levy. Perhaps all the skills she learned from Maury Povich, her husband and of daytime television fame (infamy), are finally paying off.

Some people might claim that this is related to the American public's short attention span. For example, why else would anthrax be a cover story for weeks on end, only to disappear overnight? Maybe the case is solved. We'll never know, though, because a different standard governs newsworthiness today. As the trend may indicate, the news is less about true content, and instead features more "in-depth" stories about the how the Hill family is suffering from the floods in South Texas.

More often than not, it's a human-interest story. Few better exemplify this than that rare journalistic jewel regarding the Cuban youth, Elian Gonzalez. After being discovered by the Coast Guard, an international custody battle raged. This fiasco could not have worked out better if the news had planned it itself. Where else but a soapbox in Hyde Park could an insane woman like Marisleysis Gonzalez,Elian's cousin, be allowed to air her maniacal tirades?

Either that, or Latin American news is finally receiving its just appreciation. This summer I had the privilege of watching the separation of Guatemalan conjoined twins. During the play-by-play account of the operation, I realized that neither Latin nor South America has received this much coverage since Noriega. Excuse me, but if we don't follow the plight of these people when they're not stuck together, why do so now? Endless updates of this accident of fertilization merely diminish the impact of real stories like that of South America's economic woes. One has to search El Periodico to hear about it, or be forced to read the one paragraph blurb in the Foreign Journal section of the newspaper.

No, what is really needed is a change in the way we get our news. In today's setup of 24 hour a day streaming media, there really is not enough news to warrant all the coverage. The media should be focusing on less breadth and more depth. If more of the "news hour" was devoted to a well-researched and thorough presentation of the issues, not only would it be worthwhile to watch, but we would have a more enlightened populace. But by recklessly trying to cover news that really isn't there, the media runs the risk of trivializing events they are describing. In the end, it should be more important to disseminate the news, not continually broadcast it.