The variety and actual substance of news leading up to this years superbowl has really deflated. News of a "controversy" has taken over not just sports news over the past week, but has also taken time away from other current events. In the AFC Title game, Patriots versus Colts, it was discovered that footballs used by the Patriots (allegedly only in the first half) were deflated under the NFL requirments. The issue is not very interesting at face value, but the news coverage of the story seems to say differently.
Rather than talk about the football itself, news and sports sources have focused on this scandal. NBC news, the network showing the superbowl this year, is one of the worst offenders of what amounts to a self reflexive new reporting. It would seem that they are not covering the story to inform people or to help viewers form an opinion (the purpose of press in a democratic society), it actually seems that the network is covering the story to call attention to the game that will be shown on the network this Sunday. Rather than news, a lot of air time is being allotted to promoting the Superbowl. This begs the question, what is news and what is pure advertisment? Is there any difference in this case? The model that television news uses is stories and content for a period then advetisments and then another cycle of news. Is there not enough ad time on TV already, should some limit be put on the amount that networks can advertise versus inform and still call themselves press?
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