Continuing my rant on the media, I will admit to not watching Live! with Dan Abrams, but I do, from time to time, click over to his show during the commercials of another. The thing I noticed last night was that Dan both opened his show and closed his show with Brittney Spears. The opening segment went on for at least 10 minutes at which time I gave up flipping over to that channel disgusted that so much air time had been given over to Brittney.
When you think of how much time these so-called news outlets spend on crap, is it really any wonder why Americans are so ill informed of world happenings? Now the suits will say the reason they cover crap like Anna Nicole, Brittney, and OJ is because that's what people want. And to that I say Bull Shit! The real reason is the same reason we don't have any real reporting on any of the Presidential candidates, reporting isn't easy; reporting costs money. It is so much easier to just pick up a tabloid or go to a website and see what the latest exploits of the rich and famous than it is to do an critical look at why there have been so many food recalls lately.
There is so much news out there that isn't being reported, and so much more news just waiting to be dug up. It's a pretty said statement, but they only TV coverage I saw of the falling dollar was on the Colbert Report. While there was all sorts of coverage of the failing housing market and the “sub-prime meltdown” there has been no coverage of why this has happened, the only discussion on the causes of this problem I've heard was on the Thom Hartmann show. What we get instead is the same news stories told over and over, and to break it up a bit we get hours of celebrity crap. Lou Dobbs gets an hour every day to blame every bad thing that happens in the US on illegal immigrants, yet they don't have enough time to cover all the other times Blackwater went cowboy and killed civilians.
While MSNBC runs their annoying “Doc Block” about life in jail, they leave the actual news aspect of what they are covering to the Discovery Channel. Koppel on Discovery will actually cover the part of the story that is important, the fact that we are running out of room in our jails and prisons.
When you think of how much time these so-called news outlets spend on crap, is it really any wonder why Americans are so ill informed of world happenings? Now the suits will say the reason they cover crap like Anna Nicole, Brittney, and OJ is because that's what people want. And to that I say Bull Shit! The real reason is the same reason we don't have any real reporting on any of the Presidential candidates, reporting isn't easy; reporting costs money. It is so much easier to just pick up a tabloid or go to a website and see what the latest exploits of the rich and famous than it is to do an critical look at why there have been so many food recalls lately.
There is so much news out there that isn't being reported, and so much more news just waiting to be dug up. It's a pretty said statement, but they only TV coverage I saw of the falling dollar was on the Colbert Report. While there was all sorts of coverage of the failing housing market and the “sub-prime meltdown” there has been no coverage of why this has happened, the only discussion on the causes of this problem I've heard was on the Thom Hartmann show. What we get instead is the same news stories told over and over, and to break it up a bit we get hours of celebrity crap. Lou Dobbs gets an hour every day to blame every bad thing that happens in the US on illegal immigrants, yet they don't have enough time to cover all the other times Blackwater went cowboy and killed civilians.
While MSNBC runs their annoying “Doc Block” about life in jail, they leave the actual news aspect of what they are covering to the Discovery Channel. Koppel on Discovery will actually cover the part of the story that is important, the fact that we are running out of room in our jails and prisons.
2 comments:
This simply means we have to work harder nowadays to find true news. Fortunately for us, the internet is indeed good for something. Yes, it is sad when the "fake" news shows get more viewers and true (yet unfortunately unpopular) staples like Discovery or PBS get more stories. Yes, CNN has turned within the last five years or less to more crap stories, and CNN Headline news just recycles the same ones every hour. But we must adapt and seek out new forms of "true" news. Yes it is more work for us, and no, the execs at CNN have no clue what U.S. citizens want to watch. But as the times change, so do we.
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Like most I have written off most Network news channels that "occupy" the "public" airways (ABC, NBC, CBS...) and 90% of the cable news (FOX, CNN, MSNBC...). The "Replacement Liberals" at MSNBC in my humble opinion I find to be the most dangerous. To paraphrase Glen Ford (BAR), "they are not the lesser of the two evils, but the more effective of the two evils". Lastly, I am starting to notice that even the net is becoming somewhat "homogenized". Many "progressive" blogs mirror the Corporate media in what they choose as subject matter.
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