I thought about that today and I remembered that there are reasons that news is the way it is.
News is big business and like a form of digital crack, if you start watching it, and have an opinion you are likely to be stuck at the tube or thinking, talking or reading about the “Topic Dujour”.
There are so many worthy topics that we don't hear mentioned that I wonder, how the process works of deciding what airs and what gets ignored. How much is it a matter of ratings and viewers, and how much of it is a public service?
Why is it that we think of the business of news as some kind of a “public service” ? Is it because the constitution of the United States of America has provisions to see to it that we have a free press?
But even a free press needs to make money, and the business of news is, I am sure, way beyond anything the founding fathers could have imagined. There are ways we get news today that is pretty incredible and attest to the fiends we are for news.
My daughter has a phone, a blackberry, and I know that she can, if she pleases, get information and news and maps and the Internet while riding on any remote road. We have become a culture of news-a-holics, and someone has given us the technology that allows us to lose ourselves in the news of the day.
Granted, some days are big news days, like the day Michael Jackson died, and we know that when a big story breaks, it is on the minds of just about everyone , every where. Amazing, they get us all on the same page, then dazzle us with BS, after the two minutes of known, verified facts have been related.
Michael was a hell of a singer, but then, six days later, you get the distinct impression that the news people are milking it, to the injury of perhaps other, more important stories, like the real reasons we still have troops in Afghanistan? Or , Why is there meat in our supermarkets that have labels that say the meat is from “ USA, Mexico and Canada”. (either a huge cow or a very well traveled one?)That is a story I would like to see. They would have my undivided attention for that period of time they covered it, but they don't. And if they did, I think depending on what kind of news you like, left center or right, you would get the same basic facts within two minutes, then three completely different spins.
MSNBC can be counted on the be on the progressive left, right up until when that Ed guy gets on then they tend to step deeper into left field (no pun intended). Then there is CNN, with it's attempts to walk the tight rope of the middle of the road. I heard that my father can't watch CNN , because Wolf Blitzes voice annoys him. I tried to get annoyed by Wolf myself and fell asleep in the process. He bores me to sleep just about every time I can't find the remote and get stuck on CNN when he is on. What kind of parent names their child, Wolf?
CNN is all middle of the road stuff until, Lou Dobbs. What is his beef with Mexicans? He seems a little over the top with his anti-brown people rants and I hear he is married to a Latina, go figure? Is he pissed at his in laws? Taking it out on the people that live just below our border, or just around around the corner.
Anderson Cooper is pretty good, but, he seems to do an in depth story on something that the day before I decided I was no longer interested in. Bad timing Andy.
Then you have Fox. World renowned for their constant and steep right leaning slant, Fox delivers the goods for the right wing and on a regular basis. The line up reads like a who's who of the crazy right.
Bill O'Riley, the man who was taken aback by the fact that, while in Harlem, at the famous eatery Sylvia's, the other patrons of this Harlem culinary landmark, didn't curse when they ordered the Lemon aid Ice Tea. (I refuse to call that Arnold Palmer, he didn't invent that mixture, my great Aunt Rose did, as anyone with any sense knows). Do you have to be stupid to believe anything Bill O says? Maybe not, maybe just bias.
Then there is Sean “ I look like an Archie's comics character ” Hanity, who never ceases to amaze me at the depth of his disingenuous attempts to fan flames of what ever he thinks is an “outrage” at the time. I can't watch him long enough to tell you more than to say I'd have a hard time trusting him.
I just don't believe anything he says. But millions do listen to Sean and they cheer him on, or else he would have long since seeped into some other corner of modern like where his moderate skills could be used, like a hot Dog cart vendor, or mad taxi driver from Queens.
The pinnacle, of late, of the far right of Carl Rove crazy crew is the crying man himself, Glenn Beck. He reminds me of the kind of kids that got picked on in school. I can just see his puffy face, blotchy red in anger and frustration as his books are tossed on the roof of the gym building. I read that he is a recovering alcoholic, that is not so unusual, know a few of them myself. But I also read that he joined the Mormons after he rehabbed . That is rather unique. Nothing overtly bad or sinister about that, I guess. Even though the Mormon Church, until the mid-seventies had some rather archaic beliefs as it related to people of African decent and even though they publicly denounced that position some time ago, I still never feel comfortable around those Mormon evangelist that ride bikes through Compton wearing crisp white shirts and asking to speak with people about God. As if the people they are “Evangelizing” had never heard of the concept.
Glen Beck appears to me to be flying by the seat of his likely oppressively tight pants. He's not trustworthy either and that is my point, I guess. We all watch the people we trust. But in reality they may too be steering our minds into directions that was decided on in focus groups and with the over-all profit potential of the show, not the importance of us being well informed at the heart of their coverage. Being well informed it turns out, is our responsibility.
Where is Tim Russert and Walter Cornkite when you need them? ( I know they happened to both be dead, bad example). Where are the guys or ladies that give us the straight dope, no holds bared truth and facts?
Remember “Y2K”? Got us all on that one, to different extents. Turns out the only people that made money on that deal were the news media and the folks writing the computer codes and getting paid to rush and fix a problem. The irony there and also under-reported was that fact that apparently these same people were not sharp enough to catch the Y2K bug, when they wrote the computer codes the first time.
I was busy the last few days and I didn't get a chance to watch my regular line up of news that I agree with, and I seem to be thinking about other things, not wild fires, but, how long does it take a pineapple to grow from seed? Or I wonder if the fish are biting at the pier? I like being out of the loop, sometimes.
I smelled smoke the other day, so I knew fires were burning, and I could have told you two days ago that the weather today, would be hot, and I would have been right. And without even looking I can tell you that some new GOP ploy to undermine progress is taking root somewhere between the east Bronx and the West end of Venice Beach, and I would have been right on that as well.
I say take back your mind, and thought process and look for the news you feel is important. If you let them decide, you will be spinning your wheels, so to speak. As the wise man said. They don't tell us what to think, just what to think about.
Maybe it's just me. What do you think?
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