News Coverage

I was sincerely expecting to see a broad range of news coverage on the British TV when I moved here. Coming from a country with news censorship, I am happy to embrace what the free press has to offer. But I have to admit so far I am very disappointed by the news coverage on the five channels I have. The local news is dull, dominated by crimes (bank robbery, missing persons, etc), polictical scandal and sports. The international news coverage by BBC world is more or less like CNN and other news channels. When there is a "breaking news" like bird flu, sharon is gravely ill, the news channels will be bombarded with the close watch on the development of the case...As if this is something on everybody's agenda!

I once talked to a friend who is a senior producer at CBS, and surprisingly he has the same frustration about the variety of news coverage. He said he even sent a letter to the president in their news division with a proposal on reforming the news content and production so that news could be something more interesting, enlightening to watch rather than the same story repeated by the different network TVs.

It is fair to say that reading news on Internet is a good alternative, it has all the information you want to know and you can customize it to your own interest and taste. The downside as compared to conventional TV news is that it is not as multi media as TV news (this of course will improve with broadband and streaming technology). Also people tend to have their TV on when they get up in the morning, so they can do multi-tasking but with Internet news, you literally have to sit there and click your mouse. But who knows, we have video on demand now so news on demand is probably on the way.