Media Critique: WLKY vs. WDRB vs. CJ on Fluff Stories

Even though "Fluff" stories aren't really essential in our everyday lives, as humans, we tend to enjoy listening to gossip and celebrity break-ups over important diplomacy issues in Iraq. It's important to balance such stories with ones with more impact. Often times, news stations choose ratings over their own journalistic integrity. If you look below, you'll see the large difference between the percent of fluff stories in different stations. For example, WLKY has only 2% of its stories as fluff while WDRB has about 12%! Though I find it commendable that WLKY has so few of its stories on fluff, it might be more enjoyable for some of the audience and a news station should take into account the consumers interest and WDRB has far too many fluff stories at %12 but CJ has a good amount at 7% because it keeps a good balance between needs and wants. 

This graph shows the percent of fluff stories average in an episode of WDRB, WLKY,
 and CJ. Note how CJ is almost perfectly in the middle of the two extremes next to it. 

Media Critique: WLKY vs. WAVE and WHAS on Crime

Look at the graph below. Almost all of the points line up except for the category listed as "Crime". WLKY has almost six crime stories out of about fourteen per episode. This may just be because there is a sudden burst in crime when this data was collected but this isn't the case. Both WHAS and WAVE have significantly less stories. There are many reasons why this may be. Perhaps both WHAS and WAVE missed all of the high-profile crime stories but it is more likely that WLKY is digging up insignificant crime stories to make for a more interesting thirty minutes. This is breaking the Principle of Journalism "Make the Important Interesting". Reference the chart below for all of the data mentioned above.  

This graph shows how many stories of different types were in three different
stations. Make sure to look at the differences between the different data points

Media Critique: WHAS Comes Short on Stories

WHAS's number of stories per episode average makes very little sense. Though you can obviously fit more articles on a webpage than in a thirty minute show, shouldn't you be able to get all of the major stories from the television show alone? All of the other stations, though there aren't the same number of stories on both the webpage and the the television episode, there id never a distance larger than eleven stories but in WHAS's case there is a gap of about thirty-eight stories. You might point out that the news-crew over at WHAS puts out too many stories on their website but there is also, on average, about eight more stories meaning it doesn't meaning WHAS doesn't keep the general public as up to date as it should. To see all the data, look at the chart below.

This chart displays how many stories each of the news-stations in Louisville
KY had over a several-week period on average. Note the large difference
 between the data on WHAS and on all of the other stations

Media Critique: CNN's "The Latest"

When you look at the sidebar that says "The Latest" on a a news website, you expect all of the need to know news pieces for that day. That is not the case with CNN. Instead of putting important events, it displays a feature articles titled "Breast Implants in Short Supply", "Miley Cyrus Flag Stunt Condemned", and "Did LeBron get his hairline fixed". I don't know about you as readers, but these excuses for feature articles hardly even qualify as journalism. They break a multitude of principles and yardsticks of journalism.

The first principle this section of the website violated was Watchdog. Not a single article featured was censoring or even centered on politics. The only mention of any American, political leader was in the article "Obama's Republican cousin is...?" which focuses on the fact that Senator Ted Cruz is Obama's cousin. A fact that is this worthless for the average American. The next principle broken by this sidebar is Make the Important Interesting. This principle doesn't work the other way around. Make the Interesting Important is definitely not a principle. Not only are none of these articles important, but CNN also tries to make them seem far more essential than they truly are.

Now to start on the seven yardsticks. Obviously none of these articles are newsworthy, for reasons previously stated and because hardly anything written there will have any sort of lasting impact. This sort of household gossip should not be allowed on a national website. This section of the CNN website definetly needs some reviewing and should be edited to only show events that are actually meaningful in peoples' everyday lives.