YouTube isn't killing TV news. TV news is killing TV news.
Friends I visit regularly in Chicago  who make it a point to know about everything cool before everyone else  introduced me to YouTube long before it was an international sensation or topic in journalism classes. I don't explore the site too often in my normal life here in Kansas; but, every time I drop into the Windy City, I'm always exposed to at least a couple baffling, hilarious, disturbing, bizarre videos. Videos brought to us all by the world's foremost provider of…well, baffling, hilarious, disturbing, bizarre videos.
And that's where I found the gem linked to here, which is an actual television news report from the Mobile, Ala., local station. Long story short: It's about a leprechaun sighting. Watch it and despair with me  not for the man whose hopes I'm sure were eventually dashed when he uprooted the tree and did not find a pot of gold, but for the millions of Americans who, with a perfectly straight face, would refer to this retarded display as "news."
People actually think they're finding out what's going on in the world.Photo courtesy of North Dakota State University.
It's despicable that journalists could offer nothing better than this to the citizens of Mobile who sat down to watch the nightly news and find out what was happening in their community. I'm not saying that this clip is representative of TV news in general, but it seems an apt example of why more and more people are turning away from TV news infotainment and searching for other options.
A substantial body of communication scholarship has emerged in the past few decades that argues that the way television news presents – or more specifically, "frames" – the information it communicates to the public dissuades citizens from participating in their own representative democracy by encouraging them not to hold public officials accountable for public issues. Yes, I realize that's quite a lot to digest, so you might want to take it slowly – it's not exactly a leprechaun sighting. Start with these: A, B.
YouTube is not a replacement for TV news. Online news as we know it is not a replacement for traditional news  yet. But have faith. It eventually has to get better than this.
If anybody actually reads the link on framing I'd like to know. Your central insight is quite good. So good I moved it to the lede. Your penultimate graf is too grad school geeky for my personal blogging taste. But maybe someone will come to your defense.
I would hate to think that anyone watching TV news took that leprechaun report seriously. The news anchors certainly didn't. If the sketch wasn't enough to tip the station's hand, I don't know what was.
That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with having some fun with the news. We've been too serious and too somber for too long. The appeal of YouTube is that no one takes the stuff on there seriously. Who can fault that Alabama news station for trying to steal a bit of YouTube's glory? If all anyone ever wanted was serious news about politics and the state of the country, no one would watch YouTube. Ask your friends if they watched Bush’s State of the Union. I’ve asked quite a few people and most of them said they didn’t. The speech wasn’t framed. It was aired live and sadly, no one cared. There’s something wrong with society at large when a leprechaun in a tree trumps the president. I don’t think that’s a reflection of the media; I think it’s a reflection of our country’s messed-up values. Sadly, the media are fighting a losing battle.
As long as we're being bombarded by a million different types of media from a million different entities, I think some organization would help people sift through and make sense of what they're gorging their senses with. You're right, no one takes YouTube seriously. That's one of the reasons it's beautiful. But, news programs only have a limited time to present the day's most important issues. I find it hard to believe that nothing more important than a leprechaun sighting occurred in Mobile that day. If people want to be lighthearted and whimsical, they can watch YouTube.
I didn't watch the State of the Union address because I already knew everything Bush was going to say (the bloggers already tipped me off) and I knew that if I ever felt the urge to watch Bush stammer over hours of regurgitated bullshit, I could always look it up on the Web.
I'm glad Heidi chimed in on the leprechaun story. I thought "what-she-said," myself. And I would add that the CNN story on an affinity for "cute" being a Darwinian-ly selected trait in humans, as well as other species, was actually a pretty interesting science story. Darwinian irony abounds in this post. (Although Heidi used the term "framed," she probably had to learn it for some other class. Doesn't count.)