[.ca] If It Bleeds, It Leads: An Anatomy Of Television News (ISBN 0813398193)

don't bother!:
The best thing about this book was it's title. The rest is not worth the bother. It was redundant and, basically, just sarcastic drivel.

although you've seen the news a thousand times...:
you may not have realized what was really going on behind the scenes. this books tells you like it really happens. it is VERY INTERESTING to news junkies like me.

It Leads to Brilliance:
Matthew Kerbal gets it right every step of the way. By merely stating the obvious Kerbal makes us all aware of the dementia running through telelvision's need to please and worse, to fill too much air time. Staying out of the way, Kerbal brilliantly illuminates the uselessnes of TV News and with a great sense of humor he brings out the stranger-than-fiction aspects of American society. Bravo. A truly excellent read.

Enough Already:
The author makes an interesting point, that is, that there is hardly a shade of difference between the manner in which the talk shows and the news programs market their product, that they both manipulate their audiences, and that their subjects are presented for impact, rather than content. However, he makes this point in the first 15 to 20 pages, and he then makes it again, and again, and again, and again. I never thought such a short book could become so redundant and so boring. Good idea, bad delivery.

Critics reconsider...:
I can't figure out what the critics hated about this book. Kerbel makes a fascinating connection between popular TV (talk shows) and the news and follows up with incisive, often hilarious line-by-line dissection of the formulaic venality of editorial decisions governing what we see on TV news. Perhaps it is Kerbel's implied message that we viewers, and our baffling craving to be scared and misled, are to blame for the grotesque caricature that news-at-5 and -11 has become. TV, and its interrelated fact and fiction programming, is nothing more than the sum of we the viewers' flawed values, and this is Kerbel's unsettling message behind the humor. Buy it.