WHAS spent such an extensive period of time discussing the trial, in fact, that on that day, there were only two real news stories when you exclude the sports and weather. The lead story alone lasted almost nine whole minutes. Combined with the long breaks and excessive amounts of weather and sports stories, there was only time for one more, very fast and barely relevant story.
However, it was not a slow news day. Every other news station still had at least seven stories that day, despite the Camm Trial. On top of that, The Courier Journal's archive shows clearly that the two stories featured were not the only newsworthy of the day. A list of news stories from the courier-journal.com's archive for the 24th is shown below.
While not all of these stories are relevant and several are sports related, there are many significant stories that viewers of WHAS news would have benefited from hearing. Things such as a new bullying protection order in JCPS, a vote to ban alcohol sales after two a.m, and a program aimed to prevent teen car crashes. These stories have more impact than the unnecessarily lengthy story covering the Camm trial, and are also far more interesting.
On October 24, 2013, WHAS violated the yardsticks of newsworthiness (it told about things that had little to no impact for only a short period of time) and enterprise (they did not seek out answers; they asked "what" rather than "why"), and they principle of making the important interesting (rather than making the interesting important).
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