Jonah Goldberg on the sorry state of local TV news broadcasts:
Eight times more airtime went to covering accidental injuries than to local politics, and sports and weather received 12 times more coverage. There is nothing wrong with sports and weather coverage, but I think it's scandalous that crack Eyewitness News ninjas across the country are 800 percent more likely to break the story about a kid who stuck his tongue to a frozen flag pole than they are to cover a congressional campaign.
Now, I hate using words like "scandalous" when talking about the media not doing its job. I loathe the eat-your-spinach, goody-goody pieties of American journalism. But this really is terrible. And, alas, I cannot fall back on the usual culprit of liberal media bias, which is the stick I usually use to beat the press like a pinata.
The real culprit, sigh, is free enterprise. One of the inconvenient facts we conservatives don't like to mention is that the free market isn't very conservative. Capitalism tends to erode established traditions and community values. Competition forces firms - including local news stations - to fight for customers by giving them what they want. And - again, alas - sometimes what the customer wants is crap.
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