Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Charge the Media

It was a surreal thing watching the so called 'Newscasts' last night.  Every one of the stations mirrored the others on the lame news front.  The big story of the day, again, was the story of the guy who shot his brother in law with a cross bow.  There were some video of bloody rags.  Of course the real reason for this repetitive news was the new extreme poor quality video of this guy being arraigned.  The stations are doing this kind of thing more and more where they have the government to provide video their shows.  Next story up was a 911 call audio of someone reporting a child abuse case.  Another easy picking that requires little effort on the journalism front.  I am beginning to think that local government should charge a stringer fee every time they provide video and audio for a news cast.

The Albuquerque Journal is no different.  Today they opine that they should get video of that meltdown by Rep. Stapleton a few weeks ago.  Apparently there was a security camera nearby.  The Journal editors are upset that the Legislative Council won't release it.  Now, they can't throw the whole embarrassing incident on their website in order to attract a few more hits.  And then the Journal today provides us with dark humor in running another pro oil and gas piece from the much discredited Rio Grande Foundation.  They are trying to say fracking is good and harmless.

It really might be time for some brave legislators to pass that much threatened bill that would make the Journal pay gross receipts taxes on the sales of their paper like every other business does on the sale of their products. I am pretty sure the TV stations do so.

We can only dream.


1 comment:

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

Thank goodness research libraries don't charge visitors special taxes and fees for doing research and borrowing materials.

It will be a sad day when all newspaper and magazines are all forced to shut down because of the high cost of operating expenses and lack of sales.
I already spend way too much time on the computer and am not looking forward to doing even more reading online.
I have no doubt that my future Grandkids will one day only know about newspapers in a museum.


~L