My favorite thing on CNN is when they look at what's happening on the Blogosphere. It's about the only time you get any real news, although they do tend to skip a lot of the more important stuff. Today I was thinking that what's really happening is that we're doing their work for them, and it's a sad reflection on the corporate media whores.
CNN's little peek at the Blogosphere can be turned around on them. What if the blogs do what they do in reverse, and report on what the media is reporting on. For example, if we examined the coverage that CNN provided last week, I imagine it would look like this:
Newsnight with Aaron Brown
Monday-
Pope coverage- 45 minutes
Iraq war - 40 seconds
M. Jackson - 4 min.
Tom Delay - 20 seconds
Commercials - 10 minutes
Tuesday- same
Wednesday- same
Thursday- same
Friday- same
The week before that would be the same except for replacing Pope coverage with Terri Schiavo coverage.
So we need 15 volunteers to spend 1 hour a week keeping track of what CNN covers. We could keep track of Newsnight, Paula Zahn, and Anderson Cooper. Each volunteer would write down exactly how much time is devoted to what stories, and I bet it will be eye opening. We all know how much time is devoted to Michael Jackson, silly crime stories, dumb celebrity interest pieces, etc. But if we actually do a tally every day, then maybe they'll report it when they do their piece on the blogosphere. Fat chance, huh? But I bet it will make for interesting diaries.
This seems like it's something that should be happening anyway. If anyone knows of an organization that keeps track of this kind of thing, maybe we can just download the info and do a diary about it. I am interested in kossacks comments on my idea. I think it would be fun, while shedding some light on the kind of coverage the corporate media provides. Maybe we can expand it to CBS, NBC, ABC, or just pick a different outlet every week or so.
Anyone have any ideas? If you like the concept and want to volunteer, say so in your comments and I'll contact you and set something up.