What Did TV News Really Learn from 9/11

[Commentary] Television news was so deeply involved in covering the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and those attacks were so traumatic that you would expect TV news was significantly changed by the experience. But has it?

What about all those predications in the wake of the disasters that TV news would finally get serious — that more sober local newscasts would turn their attention to public affairs and that the networks would start covering happenings in other parts of the world so if we are attacked again we don't have to stand around asking ourselves why others would indiscriminately kill us just because we are Americans. Those who hoped that 9/11 would compel TV stations to improve have to be disappointed. If anything, the content has gotten thinner and more parochial. Newscasts may be relying even more heavily on the easy, sensational stuff — crime, fires, accidents. And enterprise reporting has diminished, even though technology has been enabling stations to do more with less. Fact is, there are forces far more powerful than Al Qaeda ever was shaping local TV news. They are bloodless economic ones, which have been demanding that stations produce more news for more platforms on tighter budgets.