I remember the days when my parents would take over the TV and force me to either go outside and play or suffer the torture of watching something on TV that was actually informative. That show that they used to watch was called “the news”.
The show would tell you about stuff that was actually going on in other places. It would often say what it meant to us back home. I couldn’t stand that boring ass shit.
It took some time, but after a fine liberal arts education, I began to enjoy informative programming that had no butt kickings and only the slightest amounts cleavage. I began to understand that there was power in knowing stuff.
Fast forward to today and the news still comes on… sort of.
For some reason, the big wig TV executives decided that the news should be entertaining, which is fine, accept when entertainment actually takes the place of information transmission.
The news today has all sorts of rock music, “catch your eye” graphics and stories meant to tug at your heart strings; also slightly more cleavage, I’m happy to report. Unfortunately, none of that has anything to do with what is going on in the world today.
You want to know how bad it is? I’ll tell you a secret that your newscaster never will. We’re still at war in Afghanistan!
I know. Sit down, take a breath.
Ask yourself: How the hell can we be at war and it not make the evening news? It happens that Americans are no longer entertained by dead Afghans and dead soldiers. Oh, we will watch video after video of soldiers coming home from duty but not once do we bother asking why was he/she gone for so long and what was he/she doing that was more important than his/her children?
If the war effort being glossed over isn’t enough, what have we replaced it with? Violence against women and children.
I won’t get started on the media fiasco that was the Trayvon Martin case. That pretty much told what we all knew, a lot of people are just fine with the amount of racism where it is, no matter how many young Black men die. But, never mind that. How about some kidnapped girls in Cleveland… I mean in California… I mean India. I mean anything but a story about our societal urge for violence against women. Let’s not talk policy change or even a national conversation on the matter, let’s just talk about how crazy the perpetrators were and not how we let those girls and women down as a society.
You want to talk about guns? Not going to happen, but we can talk about niggas getting shot. The rate at which people have been getting killed with gun violence has been in decline since 1990 but you wouldn’t know it by watching the news. Niggas not getting shot isn’t news but a bloodstain on the curb is.
It took 20 children dying in a school to ignite national conversation about gun control but once congress decided that it wasn’t big enough of a deal to affect a change in the law, it wasn’t big enough to keep the debate going in the news either.
You want to know what’s going on in trying help the situation with poverty? Good luck seeing something about that on the news, homeless people aren’t sexy.
I blame this situation on Fox News. They figured out that if you pander to people’s political leanings that they will just drool and nod. After that, the advertisers will stand in line for some of that low I.Q. audience. MSNBC followed suit and while they are burdened with reason and logic, it would be nice to see them do a little more news about something other than how retarded republicans are.
Poor CNN, the aging champion of the news game is forced to follow the upstarts and has lost its investigative reporting flair for holograms and blaring rock music. Quick side note: I’m a little mad at CNN for inventing the news crawl, that line of news that scrolls along at the bottom of the screen. If it is that fucking important, how about you cover it on the news? If it isn’t that important then take it off the damned TV screen!
Ahem, I again digress.
There is hope. Of all places, people have turned to Comedy Central for information. Let that sink in a minute. A TV network that is centered on making you laugh is a place where you can actually get some news reporting. The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart (and John Oliver) along with the Colbert report not only book thought provoking guests but actually give in depth coverage of a few stories for more than a whole minute. They might use satire and sarcasm to get the point across but I’ll be damned if the point doesn’t actually get made.
Maybe it is the news that’s the joke.
You can try and take to the internet to stay up to date; try to get some truth and reporting, but lots of luck with that. I’m old enough that I don’t trust much stuff on the internet. Unless it has something to do with Amanda Bynes being bat shit crazy, just take it as some disgruntled writer shooting off at the keyboard, that’s all the internet is good for anyway.
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