http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/consumer&id=8842811
The video above is about a mother who bought an iPad for her daughter's 15th birthday, but when the box was opened, it instead contained a package of notepads.
One type of media bias in this video is, I believe, Temporal Bias. This news isn't exactly groundbreaking, and most likely something that we will altogether forget in a couple of weeks, if not days. News has to constantly feed us some kind of product to keep us entertained, even if it isn't really news. Yes, this is incredibly unfortunate, and I do feel bad for the mother and daughter, but as the video said, the situation was resolved eventually and soundly and there will be no lasting damage whatsoever to anyone involved. There was no real need to report this story, nor does my watching/reading it affect me in any major way. It was something to fill in time and add a little variety to the newscast because we're all getting tired of the Romney/Obama-24/7-Constant-News-Updates.
The second type of bias that I noticed is Bad News Bias, which kind of ties in with Commercial Bias. This news story shows us something that could, but probably won't, happen to us. Since it is something bad, we should care, right? I mean, no one wants to get conned like that. And since the situation resolved itself in a positive manner, the story also included the happy little bit at the end about how there may be more fraudulent boxes throughout the store, and possibly many more stores. This worries us, and thus, draws us in and makes us want to watch the story and learn more, even if the real risk to us and cause to worry at all is minimal at best. The story is making a semi-minor situation seem to be a much bigger deal than necessary, going as far to send out a reporter for a clip of him standing outside of the Wal-Mart. This isn't major news, yet I've found many, many sites reporting it.
ReplyDeleteI think this video was interesting. I love watching Inside Edition for stories like this. Also I liked your evaluation. In your first paragraph you discussed Temporal Bias and I didn’t really think about this type of news and how much it doesn’t really matter until now. Whenever I come across a story like this it always interests me but I never realized how easily I forget about it. It pretty much entertains me an could spark an emotion in me as I'm watching it, but by the next day a story like this wouldn’t even cross my mind. I also agree with the Bad News Bias. Doesn’t it seem that almost every piece of news it bad news these days. On WCIA 3 they have a segment called good news corner and a lot of the time I feel like that’s the only good news in the whole hour long show.
From the very beginning of this video I noticed something kind of strange. Other than Temporal and Bad News Bias I saw Glory Bias. The man who was actually on the scene covering the story didn’t really do it , but the other two in the studio did. At the beginning and the end they refer to Jeff as a hero or that he rescued the family or something to that extent. The first thing out of the woman's mouth is "Jeff Ehling to the rescue again" They kind of make it seem like the only reason that anything got resolved was because of Jeff. The video closes with the same woman thanking Jeff for rescuing the family and that they appreciate it. I don’t really know what he did, but I feel like they made how Jeff and the news station a part of the story rather than them really showing emotion toward the family.
-Breanna H.
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