This is my blog.
It is a sad fact of life that ordinary Americans turn on a television to get "news". If you look at the entire population events in a given day and aggregate them to a handful of stories, you don't come anywhere near the evening news. I know bringing up Darfur will make me look like an ultra-liberal asshat, but it does make a nice example - there have been over 3000 times more deaths in this genocide than the Americans in the Iraq war. What makes news?
I know Fox News has had a bad reputation for the past...ever... but their downward trend of shitty media has grown beyond Bill O'Reilly talking out of his ass. MSNBC, ABC, even CNN will take a shit on a piece of paper and call it news. CNN's top story yesterday was "Giant Squid caught on film!". This makes me fear for humanity.
The problem is clear - today's media outlets are solely focused on making money. Their integrity and dedication to broadcast actual informational stories is pathetic at most. Special reports have gone from interesting views to simply playing on the public's emotions.
A week or so ago I turned on CNN Headline News and caught a few minutes of "Nancy Grace." Now, I don't know who has heard about/seen this lady, but she is CRAZY. In just 15 minutes she displayed a multitude of slanted opinions and biased views predicated solely on viewer emotion as support.
Nancy was commenting on a bizarre story of an infant being admitted to a hospital for being drunk. The baby had consumed 3 ounces of vodka and was admitted by her mother, who claimed she had accidentally filled his bottle with vodka instead of water, which happened to be in a water bottle for an unknown reason. This was the entirety of the facts presented to her, and she went on a tirade.
In 15 minutes she managed to speculate that the father had vodka in a water bottle in the car to get drunk before shopping with his wife, condemn the mother for not drinking the water from the water bottle first, claim that vodka can be smelled from at least 5 feet away, compare weight ounces to fluid ounces to demonstrate the amount of vodka consumed, and conclude that child service should take away the couple's baby.
Nancy Grace....you are an idiot. Although, the real person to blame is anyone who watches that shit an agrees. During the show a viewer called in and commented with how often she watches the show and how she agrees child services should step in.
Now, I'm not saying that it wasn't a complete accident and the mother was responsible, but that is actually something for a judge to decide, not some crackpot.
Now, even though news on television has diminished incredibly, we don't live in Communist China, so there are ways to get ACTUAL news. The best resource is definitely the internet. No, not cnn.com, but rather an unbiased news source like BBC or NPR. These sites are still interested in generating traffic, so the BEST place to go for unbiased news is actually wikipedia, although you have to know what to be searching for.
I'll tone down the political rant next post, I swear.
Something to listen to - We Are Scientists - It's a Hit
Something to do - a headstand for 10 seconds
3 comments:
I definitely agree with everything that you are saying here. What's even worse, is that I am the kind of person that isn't informed at all. If you asked me anything about Darfur I could not tell you a single fact about it. Politics? I got nothing. Even the war in Iraq, I know nothing. Is being the kind of person that lives in my own bubble, that doesn't watch the news, or read the paper, or keep myself informed at all better or worse than those that watch the news for squid stories? I could say that if I had more time or whatever I would go to wikipedia or BBC and read the articles. But most of me just doesn't care. And I know that I am not alone in that situation. What does one do about that?
Maybe you will care one day, and you'll know where to look.
Maybe you will never care, and that's cool too...just never vote :)
Over the past 2 weeks, whenever I was at someone's house who had cable [for I do not] and we were looking for things to watch, Nancy Grace was ALWAYS on. I swear, it seems like that's all that CNN is showing. It's rather sad.
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