CBS News at 6:30

I watched the 6:30 edition of the CBS 2 News just now, and I made a note of each story in the order that it was presented in. The stories were as follows:

1. An update on the Swine Flu Epidemic: school districts throughout the country are being closed throughout the country including the Deer Park district in Suffolk County. Even though the three students there that were diagnosed with the disease have made a full recovery, the schools are going to remain closed for 3 weeks.

2. A brief summary of the kind of action being taken throughout the world to combat the Swine Flu: Examples included the government mandated slaughter of animals suspected to be infected in Egypt and the quarantine of Mexicans that are suspected of having the disease.

3. A report about a 25 year-old woman named Laura Garza that has gone missing and was last seen with a known sex-offender.

4. 30 people are homeless thanks to a 4 alarm fire in Newark

5. The drowning deaths of a New Jersey man and his niece have been ruled a murder-suicide. The man evidently jumped off a bridge while holding his niece.

6. Senator Arlen Specter commented on why he switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party.

7. Jack Kemp died yesterday of cancer at age 73. He was a former NFL player that translated his athletic career into a successful political career. He was a member of the House of Representatives for a long time, and was chosen as Bob Dole’s running mate during the 1996 presidential election.

8. A high school star student-athlete collapsed during track practice before dying shortly thereafter. He was only 17 years old.

9. The former Archbishop of New York City, Cardinal Egan, sat down for an interview to respond to the criticism he faced during his tenure.

10. 30,000 people participated in the annual 5 Borough Bike Tour despite the rainy weather.

11. Weather Report: It’s going to rain a lot over the next few days.

12. Sports Report: Yankees and Mets were rained out today, the Atlanta Hawks defeated the Miami Heat in a game 7, and Tiger Woods finished 4^th in whatever golf tournament was this weekend.

Watching the CBS News simply reaffirmed what I already knew about evening news programs: they are all extremely depressing! The first five stories were about global pandemics, murders, fires, and missing people. These were followed by a brief respite during which the relatively neutral story of Arlen Specter’s party switch was discussed. After this, it was right back to the upsetting news with stories about Jack Kemp’s passing and the tragic death of a seventeen year old student-athlete. Watching these kinds of stories is bound to make people wonder if anything good ever happens in the Tri-State area. Not that this is their fault, but even the weather and sports reports were upsetting. It’s going to rain all week apparently, and since both the Yankees and Mets had their games rained out today, the main focus of the local news story was on an upcoming biography about Alex Rodriguez that supposedly shows how he cheated and used steroids since he was in high school.

That being said, the stories that were shown were more or less ordered correctly according to importance. The lead story was obviously going to be the Swine Flu because that’s the topic that is most on people’s minds right now. From there the first minor story was about the 25 year old woman gone missing, which was shown earlier in the program because it is an issue that viewers might actually be able to help out with. Finally, after all the other bad news was shown, the news concluded with a human interest story about bikers and the sports and weather reports. Other than the general gloominess of the news stories, I have no other problems with how CBS News sets up its 6:30 edition.