May 21, 2014--Local News

I'm a TV news snob.

I have my issues with the so-called network news as well as the way national and international news is reported on CNN and other cable outlets (for their sensationalist and entertainment audience-building agenda); but I am particularly snobbish when it comes to local news.

We watch too much TV while in Florida and occasionally check in with local news reporting, particularly when there is the threat of bad weather. We otherwise tend to actively ignore it, tune it out, because we know what we will see--mainly people of color being arrested or shot down while robbing convenience stores. We know this is dog-whistle stuff--how the "news" reminds us about how "these" people behave in our midst.

Occasionally an ultra-rich guy after a polo match runs someone over in his Bentley and that gets covered. There is a strain of schadenfreude that permeates our culture that likes to see the rich and famous come crashing down. Justin Bieber comes currently to mind as does Alec Baldwin.

But mainly on Florida local news we see houses disappearing into sinkholes, Burmese pythons infiltrating the Everglades, fatal car crashes, and of course endless robberies, more and more caught by surveillance cameras. Mainly black guys in hoodies beating up South-Asian shopkeepers. Best, every once in awhile, the person behind the counter has a hidden baseball bat or gun which he uses to pound on the perpetrator or pump a couple of shots into him.

When we watch Florida local news, we gloatingly say, "Wait 'til we get to New York. At least there on the news they cover art exhibits and what's playing on Broadway."

Not so much.

The other day on the local CBS station the lead stories included a video of a taxi jumping the curb and mowing down shoppers on the Upper Eastside; pictures of a SUV crashing through the plate-glass window and all the way into a Nassau County pet store; an iPhone video of someone falling off a subway platform just as a train was about to pull into the station; and then more surveillance-camera images of an Asian grandfather being stalked by an African-American thug before being slammed to the ground and stomped on, dying from that a day or two later.

"I guess we'll have to look in the Times to see what's on Broadway," I said, trying to muster a little self-depricating humor.

But then WCBS turned to its version of national news, again it was wall-to-wall bad news--the tragic wildfires burning their way across San Diego County in California and the discovery of a second case of the Mers virus in the U.S. Wouldn't you know it, in Orlando, Florida.