Local News Versus National -- Moo Baa
Part of the problem is pressure; national news outlets are besieged with reports and must cull on the fly as they constantlly crash their deadlines. They simply learn to funnel in soft, fuzzy news to pad things out -- less for them to think about, far less for them to worry about coming back to bite them in the ass.
Cynicism plays a part, too. When, in the late 1960s, the Huntley-Brinkley report aired, David Brinkley, arguably the most cynical reporter ever to become a newsreader, in a book about those times, said that he was disgusted. He just knew it would lead to more fluff and crap. Why? In his opinion, there wasn't enough worthwhile news going on worldwide to fill a half-hour show, let alone an hour's.
He may be right.
As for un- or under-reported local murdres and the like, there seems to be a new True Crime boom in stateside TV, with many shows using these pseudo-documentary styles to tell lurid tales of sordid crime. Maybe they're saving the tasty stuff for after hours, hm?
When news programs lost autonomy and were placed under the Entertainment divisions, suddenly ratings mattered, and the pressure was on, so today they tend to shove at us the news they think we want to hear, based on demographics surveys and polls, etc. Between doing that and shoveling propaganda, there is precious little time left for any local stuff.
Gore Vidal once invited us to make a simple experiment. Count, he said, the number of sentences used to "cover" each news item, be it yet another mid-east bombing / retaliation or a gory kidnap / murder, or even a Miss America's Dog Pageant. You'll find they average from three to ten sentences for the most serious stuff, with their "In Depth" reports perhaps going to 25 sentences.
Now consider how few words that really is.
TV is about pictures, yes. But for any kind of understand of any issue, one must read. Only by reading various print souces and printed editorial discussions can one even hope to keep up.
And who has the time?
And so we are sheep, and cattle.