I assume we've all already made the "well this is one of the worst xkcds I've seen in a while" joke in our heads, so without further ado let's step through the gateway into the actual criticism.
At the most basic level, the joke fails due to the preachy nature of it. "THE MEDIA IS DOING IT WROOOOONG" and that's it. It would have been a little bit funny if two people were watching television, the guy said the line, and one person suddenly started destroying things, or embarked on a long quest, etc.
My second point might just be my own Personal Problem™ but the way I intook the information the reporter was giving was "...one of the most recognizable things in a place" rather than "...one of the most recognizable of an unusual type of structure in a small location". If the hedging was more hyperbolic, that would have made it easier to understand, but I fully understand this could be a Greg Thing™®©℗‽❧
It might also be that I prefer my news in the written word, just so I can listen to music or whatever while I do it, but I have really never seen this happen. It might have been funny if Randy was trying to play it like he was complaining about something that never happens ("Pet Peeve: Having a 10x scale of Superman fall on your house", and then the alt-text could be "Seventh time this month. No wonder the house was so cheap.") but as it is, since I've never seen reporters do this, combined with my misreading of it, almost makes it seem like he is actually making a problem up to complain about.
Also, why would reporters be talking about either of the guys who designed the Gateway Arch? They've both been dead for a while, and the better-known of the two (judging by length of their Wikipedia entries) has been dead since the sixties. Reporters are supposed to talk about current things, right? I haven't been misusing the word all this time?
As a final note, Kris Wilson, author of a similarly preachy comic released today, is a classy person and is able to accept criticism well.
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