My9 News at 10 5/11/08

My9, formerly known as the UPN, kept much of its original formatting style in the name switch. Known for its particular attention to African-American programming, their news programming featured races in an interesting way.

Anchors: Lynda Lopez (Hispanic female), Mike Gilliam (black male).

Weathercaster: Shaye Ryan (white female)

Sports: Scott Stanford (white male)

• Policeman Doug Ziegler (black male) claims he was unfairly accosted by two plainclothes white officers who suspected him of wrongdoing when he was simply sitting in his car in his pwn neighborhood. He was searched and treated poorly even after he provided identification that he was a cop. Senator Adams (black male) feels the two officers should be suspended for gross misconduct. "It is not against the law to sit in your own car...apparently unless you are black or brown" says Adams.


• Al Sharpton visited three victims of a brutal police beating where a dozen cops took the men out of their cars. One of the men insists he was not resisting arrest and did not hardly deserve the beating administered to him. All three men are black.


• There was a vigil held for mothers who have lost their black sons in police-related incidents. Members of Black Women Against Racism Empowered (BWARE) called for the end of unfair police treatment and also boycotted the commercialism of Mother's Day.


• A damaged levee in the Hackensack river in Carlstadt NJ has meant constant flooding for much of the surrounding area, including local businesses who find it hard to continue on when their companies are bogged down by water. It has been this way for a year, and the buisness owners profiled in the piece are simply asking lawmakers to fix the problem.


• Correspondent Ti-Hua Chang (Asian male) narrated a piece about the three convergent causes of rising gas prices: increased demand, uncertain supply, oil money policy. Investors flood the market, driving prices up. Americans do not change their driving habits. Featured lots of experts talking about the problem.


• The McGreevy's are set to return to court to battle over custody over their daughter.


• A fire in Jersey City has left 14 people homeless. Joann Peliggi (white female) talked to some of them, white and black.


• Disabled kids ages 4-17 play baseball in the Special All Stars program in Ridgewood.


• Bush calls his daughter's wedding "spectacular".


• A con man (Derek Jones, black male) illegally sold the Free Mission Apostolic Church for 50,000 dollars. He forged his signature on the mortgage documents, and now the company who owns the land is suing the church itself. Jones has since vanished. "He's just a demon. An evil individual" said one of the all-black church members. A white female correspondent brought the story.


• Obama might accept McCain's offer to appear together in town halls across the nation to speak and debate. John Edwards warns Hillary not to hurt Obama's chances by staying in the race too long. Hillary has not hardly given up.


• Tornadoes in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas have now killed 24 people.

This news was focused on a very local, Jersey level. Among other things, it featured the most stories having to do with the black community. A high level of diversity was present in the correspondents and newscasters, and My9 featured the first Asian correspondent I had seen in any of the news I watched. With Asians being the most underrepresented racial category in most television news, I was actually surprised to see a man like Ti-Hua Chang featured, especially with his very ethnic-sounding name. My9 news seemed to promote diversity by getting all racial groups involved with the telling of the news, and highlighted many police brutality cases right in the beginning of the program. With the recent case of Sean Bell, these issuses have proven improtant to the black community in particular.

CW11 Live News at Ten 5/10/08

One of the smaller networks around, the CW still presents its own version of the evening news. Notice the diversity of the morning news crew at right.

Anchors: white woman, black male.

Weatherman: Chris Knowles (white male)

Sportscaster: Lolita (Hispanic female)

• A 600-student brawl in California is believed to be gang-related. Showed many black students on the campus.



• Police found the corpse of a 90 year old woman in the bathroom of a Wisconsin home. Her family was convinced that prayer would revive her corpse.



• A black female was turned away from her prom in Texas for her revealing outfit. She refused to leave and police were brought on the scene, who handcuffed her and took her away.



• Erica Hill (white female) reporting on food inflation. Working Americans are the newest group attending food banks, and there is not enough to give them. "How did the land of plenty get to this point?" The food budget surplus has fallen from $242 million to $58 million.



• Jenna Bush got married, but it was very secret and no photos have been released.



• Cyclone Nargas destroyed much of Mayanmar, killing between 63-100 thousand people according to UN estimates. The military government refused aid to most of its citizens, and went on with a scheduled vote for a new military constitution.


• In Sudan, the government defeated a rebel group and killed its leader.


• Garbage lines the streets in Naples, Italy, sitting rotting for 4 months.


• A new wave of theft from bagge claims have people worried their things will be stolen.


• Rapper DMX was arrested twice in one week. Once was for reckless driving when he was caught doing 114mph, and the other was more recent and for drugs and animal crulety.


• American Idol producers have banned one of the performer's dads from rehearsals after he added a lyric to his son's song that will cost the network extra money for royalties.


• Uma Thurman is suing Lancome cosmetics for using her image after her contract expired. She wants 15 million dollars.


• Madonna might get full custody of her adopted African baby. Social workers from Malawe are watching her to see if she should get custody.


• A new study shows that moms should breast feed their kids. Kids in the study who breast-fed scored 6 points higher on an IQ test than those who did not.


• Daryl Strawberry was featured in a Mets autisim awareness benefit. 1 in 94 boys gets the disease. Jim Watkins (white male) reported. The Mets raised thousands of dollars.


• A rescue mission in Chinatown is offering a free Mother's day dinner. Mostly Asians, but other races shown there as well.

The CW11 news seemed best at delivering the news with no present bias. I felt it was informative and featured a cast of different races and genders. They used less correspondents than the bigger networks, and stuck to a studio format most of the time. They also paid much more attention to celebrity news than the other stations. This may have to do with a limited budget (celeb stories are easy to present and produce) or the fact that it's on late night on a weekend, so these stories could be meant to entertain the late-night crowd.

NBC Evening News with Chuck Scarborough 5/5/08

Tagline: "We're for New York"

This is a more localized version of Brian William's show, still featuring a recognizable news anchor, Chuck Scarborough (white male) and a black male weathercaster.

• Congressman Vito Fosella apologizes for driving drunk and getting arrested. He didn't stop at a red light and had double the legal BAC limit. A white female correspondent reported. "I regret that what I did occurred. It was a learning process."


• There is a nursing home strike underway at the Kingsbridge Center, which is $3 million behind on paying health insurance to its employees (mostly black, some Hispanic talking to white female correspondent.) Jacob Purlez, president of the organization (Hispanic male) declined to be on camera but issued a statement.


• Another story on the Uma Thurman stalker case.


• A transit plan as solution to high volumes of traffic by reopening an old out of use train station. It is to be the centerpiece of a transit village with a new bus service. Greg Sergold (white male) reporting, talking to people of different races about why they are not happy about the plans.


• Mentioned the family leave act that governor Corzine signed into law, going into effect July 09.


• NJ Catholic Priest Monsiginor Will McCarthy was cleared of child abuse charges 15 years after they were brought up against him. Black female correspondent interviewed the priest, who lives in East Hanover and is writing a book about his experiences. This was a bit of a lengthy profile piece.


• Pfizer made a deal to settle Celebrex lawsuits and will pay half a billion dollars to families affected.


• David Usher (black male) reproting on the closing of Linens and Things, the rising cost of Wawa coffee, and how the economic stimulus checks are causing buisnesses to have special deals for anyoner spending that money there.


• A piece on deaths in Oklahoma due to tornados and showing damage caused by huge hailstones.


• Personal computers went on sale in Cuba for the first time ever. Also, only recently were Cubans allowed to have cell phones and stay in luxury hotels. Fidel's brother is trying to ease the Communist grip on the citizens.


• British scientists have done a study showing that the computer keyboards in several offices had 5 times more germs and bacteria than the toilet seats in the bathroom.

I noticed here that this program featured the most minority groups of the ones I had seen thus far. Like the other programs however the people they spoke to ou on the street were mostly white. Also, the main focus of this and several of the other news programs is on the economy, not on war or crime. Money related stories are proving to be very popular.

NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams 5/2/08

Here is a look at the 6:30 Nightly News with a more celebrity-style anchor--Brian Williams (white male).

• Deadly storms and strange weather. Tornados destroying homes in Kansas City. Coverage by Janet Shamlan (white female).


• The federal reserve made a new rule putting a ban on raising interest rates without reason.


• Unemployment is up to 5% and about 20,000 jobs were lost in the month of April.


• Barack Obama campaign. Lee Calvin (white male) covering different aspects of the campaign, particularly that Barack is distancing himself from his preacher. "American voters don't want a whole lot of drama." Then they switch to the Hillary campaign, covered by Ron Allen (black male), saying that Hillary is looking for a co-sponsor for her new bill to cut spending in the senate.


• Jim Maceda (white male) reporting from Afganistan. Alpha company is under fire while looking to disrupt a Taliban stronghold. Lots of footage of actual fighting here, alos mentioning that the military has left the poppy fields alone instead of destroying them, even though the crop is involved with the production of lots of cocaine, a $4 billion dollar industry which helps to fund the Taliban.


• Meetings in China. The Dali Llama met with a Tibetan leader in Bejing to discuss the treatment of the people there by the Chinese government. Mark Mullen (white male) talking about how China wants to host the Olympics for a sense of world pride, and they are treating protestors very harshly. "They hope this will help the outside world understand China."


• People on fixed incomes are struggling with the rising cost of everything. Focused on old people recieving checks. Poor white people. 10's of millions of seniors recieve the money and many can't make ends meet without help from food kitchens, which have seen a sharp decrease in donations. "It used to be the golden years. It's the tarnished years now" says Chris Janshing (white female).


• "Making a Difference Report"--Tom Costello (white male) reporting on a Texas teacher teaching his students to build rockets for science class. The Air force launches their biggest ones.


• Kentucky Derby story on how pampered the horses are. Roger O'Neill (white male) reporting on horses beeing breeded from past winners of the race.

This newscast was focused more on world events as it was not simply a local news show. Interesting to see here that the correspondents were predominanlty white males out in the field of reporting while Brian Williams held down the studio solo. This is because he has a bankable name and image. This program used much more interview-style 'talking head' footage to present its stories than the others I watched.

Various Videos on the news

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rAXtLgMedyI An optimistic look at making an alternative to regular television news. But will it ever take off?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FD0kHKsdbvA One of the great things about local news is that they will air stories like this. Notice the ticker-tape style box on the bottom giving more relevant news in a nice concise way, headline style.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MQm1QErAsFM An example of secret corporate sponsorship present in the news, here with Brian Williams plugging special lights made by GE, a huge sponsor.

Fox 6 o'clock News--5/2/08

Tagline: "The Most Powerful Name in Local News."
Newscaster: Dari Alexander (black, female)
Weather: white male
Sports: white female

Here is a brief rundown of Fox's presentation of the news on May 2nd.

• The new governor of New York is claiming that the police have improperly investigated him after he admitted early on that he had extramarital affairs. He claims this is his only transgression and that further delving into his past is unfair and unnecessary. He is a black male, and his story lead off the whole news program.


• Police raided 3 different homes in Newark, NJ and recovered half a million dollars worth of drugs. Three of the officers shown were white, one was black.


• A naked man broke into a woman's home in Edison and lay in her bed until she woke up screaming, at which point he ran away. The man is still at large.


• Jackson William Leslie Jordan, a white man accused of stalking actress Uma Thurman, now faces up to a year in jail and says he never intended any harm. "He sees now that his conduct caused her fear," says Jordan's white male lawyer.


• Governor Corzine signed a law making NJ the 3rd state to have a family leave law. This allows people to take 6 weeks paid leave to take care of sick family members or babies, just as long as they pay $33 a year towards a state fund. This story profiled a white family with a black adopted daughter. The family was pleased to get the much-needed time off to care for their new daughter. Here was a bit of interracial interaction.


• Spotlight on the Puerto Rican day parade. Labor leader Dennis Rivera was named Grand Marshal, marking the first time a labor union leader was elected to the position. Fox news said it would actually be showing the parade for its first 2 hours before regulating the broadcast to their sister station. This may be a way to lure Hispanic viewers to the station, as their demographic seems to be one of the most underrepresented on the station. The story on the parade was actually a bit longer than the others around it, again perhaps in order to pay special attention to Hispanic affairs.


• Then there was a very short news brief about an NYPD officer's son who was stabbed to death the previous evening. Little was said about the young black man, excpet that he was an aspiring rapper. All of the pictures shown of the man had him decked out in platinum chains and baseball caps, leaning against SUV's and several other hip-hop stereotypical images. They did not mention any possible motives or suspects in the crime.


• Right after commercial, correspondent Dick Brennan (white male) told a profile story about the death of the "Miracle Marine" Merlin German, a 22 year old black male who was horribly burned over 97% of his body while serving in Iraq. "An American hero who never gave up the fight." He made a webiste for children suffering burn injuries. German died while recieving lip surgery. "He lived and died doing exactly what he wanted." In sharp contrast to the story before it, German's death was treated with care and compassion, and featured brief interviews with some of his closest friends. This however is not really surprising as German was a soldier and not a presupossed "thug".


• They then went into breaking news about a big fire in the Bronx which at that time had no reported injuries, though there were 135 firefighters trying to put out the blaze.


• The broadcast ended with a brief piece on hydrogen cars, and how they are twice as effcient as gasoline. Unfortunately, the price of hydrogen is much higher than gas. Seems no real resolution.

Conclusion: Fox 6 o'clock news featured a nicely balanced team of newscasters, though most if not all of the news correspondents were white males. However, many of them are names that Fox has used for years, people they can market to the news audience as trusted reproters on the scene. The variety of stories gave viewrs a good sense of NY/NJ news for the day, and I feel that it was a viable source of daily information. I did notice that crime stories were not featured nearly as much as political/economic news. As the country is currently experiencing a recession, this is not all too surprising. Also, it was rather obvious that caucasians are the predominantly represented race. Asians and Hispanics were virtually absent from the news stories themselves, as well as from any of the people the reporters spoke to in their presentation of the stories. Although Fox is notoriously thick-headedly conservative and often too one-sided for its own good, the network's presentation of the evening news seemed free of their infamous biases and just showed the stories from an unopinionated standpoint.