Assign. # 3 Local News

The local news of CBS aired on March 31, 2009 had many different topics. The leading news were the salmonella scare, the eventual MTA bailout, and a man who tried to kidnap girls with his car by offering them candies and money. The entire news show had only two political news. The first one was about the first European trip of President Obama. According to the CBS local news this was the sixth major important news of the day. The second reported political news was the fact that Benjamin Natanyahu became a prime-minister of Israel. This piece of news was pushed back towards the end of the news show.

The CBS local news show did not provide enough political news. I think that only two political news for a news show that is long over an hour is not enough. Moreover, the two political news were major ones and they were not even presented in the beginning of the show as leading news. The news of the G20 summit and Obama's European trip were not even in the top five news of the day. The other political news concerning the new prime-minister of Israel was pushed behind news such as "YMCA profits go up," "Bedbugs infections increase," "New pill - 5 in 1," the weather forecast, and many others.

The purpose of local news shows is to concentrate precisely on the local news. However, I think that political news, especially the ones having international implications, such as Obama's European trip, have to be the leading ones. It seems to me that the local news show was unnecessarily long and full of commercial breaks. The pieces of news were summarized to a couple of sentences or very short reportages. This made the CBS local news show uninteresting and even annoying at times.