On Friday the Federal Government almost shut down. I didn't find out about it till the next day when I heard NPR. That's one of the things I do miss about the internet, and I do find value in. It provides instant on demand news. When the medium of the internet is utilized right when it comes to the news, it has overwhelming value. Streaming live feeds from events, detailed stories with charts available to analyze, and analysis from true experts. When the Arizona congresswoman was shot, I followed it on the web. I watch most of Obama's addresses on the web. I watched The Rally to Restore Sanity on the web. I enjoyed all of them as I could cross reference everything in a different tab.
The internet has become the go to for news. It's not that people aren't following news anymore, they just aren't watching it on t.v. It's just the natural technical evolution I guess. Though the problem of why people are mostly leaving cable news is what is slowly happening to the web, and even worse...if that's even remotely possible.
The largest problem of 24/7 cable news quickly became lack of content. Despite our best efforts we just couldn't fuck our planet or our country up fast enough to fill up the news cycle. The oddest thing about this endless news cycle was, was the fact that because of it, the snippets of speeches and statements from officials and experts actually got shorter over the years. Seriously, a sound bite in the 60's was like 3 minutes long. 2011 with 24/7 news channels? 30 fucking seconds. Instead of the full context of what Obama, Cantor, Palin, or whomever else said we get a snippet that takes less time than what you can microwave a pizza slice for.
What did they decide to fill this news time up with? In depth discussions with an Econ professor from Harvard or U. of Chicago? A reading from the Congressional Oversight offices report? A full analysis of a foreign country and the issues that affect us? No, they fill it with hours of Michael Jackson's funeral, encourage Charlie Sheen's antics, discuss Britney Spears, on and on and on. They actually interrupt real news to go back to these kinds of stories.
We all know they fill up their time with hours and hours of this tabloid stuff that doesn't deserve to be mentioned on the same broadcast as wars in Cote D'Ivory or Darfur, corruption scandals, Wall Street, or the Tea Party. What's worse than that, they give us things like Nancy Grace, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity. These cultural bits of backwash that just cloud the water. They aren't news, they are poorly written editorials in school newspapers.
I'll end my rant about them because I wouldn't be blazing any new trails of commentary about them.
However, what they do is what is the new problem with cable news, and actually the way the internet does the news, and one of the biggest problems I developed about the news.
Opinion.
Opinion is not news nor analysis of the news. You know the saying about opinions right? Yeah.
In order for the cable networks to try to maintain a sense of relevance, they now ask for your Tweets, your Facebook posts, your emails, and your comments at the bottom of the webpage.
What a stupid fucking idea.
One of my favorite things about The Onion is their "man on the street" interviews. Some recent topic in the news is satirized by opinions from blithering, insensitive, selfish idiots. That's what the news is doing now. Asking for your ridiculous uninformed opinion. I have absolutely no concern of what "SExYBiker57"'s thoughts on Wall Street bailout policies are. Instead of asking his opinion, why not ask that guy from a consumer advocacy groups are, ask Paul Krugman, ask the Treasury Secretary, ask someone who's opinion is informed and relevant.
These comments from every knucklehead with a network connection are not helping things. They add to the noise of our politics which honestly has been ruined by the media. There was actually a spat between CNN and FOX over the comments on their articles. Seriously, we are letting some mouth breather who calls Obama a "Nazi Communist Muslim" in their comments direct our discourse of our government? Calling someone a Nazi Communist is so fucking ignorant of political theory not to mention history (seriously Nazi Germans hated Communist Russians! Thats what a major part of WWII was about!) it makes me twitch.
I know we are all entitled to speak our minds. We all have the right of free speech and all that. We all have freedom to think what we want. However, that doesn't entitle you to have your horribly shitty opinion listened to. I'm not kidding. If you honestly want to call America a fascist police state on par with Nazi Germany, you are fucking idiot who does not deserve my time. I don't care if you want to quote Chomsky or Zinn or Nader, because much of the time their opinion is shit too.
That leads me to the point about this blog post. Newsblogs.
They suck and should not be listened to.
No really. Huffington Post is shit news. Drudge Report is shit news. The vast majority of what they spew is so biased to one side or the other they make things worse. They dredge up opinion from failed sit com writers or junior assistant D.A.'s from Birmingham Alabama to write news articles, or make comments about serious issues. Hell, most of the time Huffington post doesn't pay it's writers. The opinions spewed forth from these places that are so out of touch with reality that are given even remote consideration just make things worse. People actually cite these articles as fact based analysis, they actually steer our social discourse, they actually affect policy. You add to the fact they have no fact checking department, they have no ethical oversight, nor any writing standards. They can say whatever they want no matter how untrue, biased, or unprofessional, and we give them credence.
We are letting what happened to cable news happen to our news on the internet. We are letting our potential for true media oversight of our government and our society become the prophets wall from Monty Pythons Life of Brian.
I'm not missing that one bit, but I am missing my access to quality news on demand.
The internet has become the go to for news. It's not that people aren't following news anymore, they just aren't watching it on t.v. It's just the natural technical evolution I guess. Though the problem of why people are mostly leaving cable news is what is slowly happening to the web, and even worse...if that's even remotely possible.
The largest problem of 24/7 cable news quickly became lack of content. Despite our best efforts we just couldn't fuck our planet or our country up fast enough to fill up the news cycle. The oddest thing about this endless news cycle was, was the fact that because of it, the snippets of speeches and statements from officials and experts actually got shorter over the years. Seriously, a sound bite in the 60's was like 3 minutes long. 2011 with 24/7 news channels? 30 fucking seconds. Instead of the full context of what Obama, Cantor, Palin, or whomever else said we get a snippet that takes less time than what you can microwave a pizza slice for.
What did they decide to fill this news time up with? In depth discussions with an Econ professor from Harvard or U. of Chicago? A reading from the Congressional Oversight offices report? A full analysis of a foreign country and the issues that affect us? No, they fill it with hours of Michael Jackson's funeral, encourage Charlie Sheen's antics, discuss Britney Spears, on and on and on. They actually interrupt real news to go back to these kinds of stories.
We all know they fill up their time with hours and hours of this tabloid stuff that doesn't deserve to be mentioned on the same broadcast as wars in Cote D'Ivory or Darfur, corruption scandals, Wall Street, or the Tea Party. What's worse than that, they give us things like Nancy Grace, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity. These cultural bits of backwash that just cloud the water. They aren't news, they are poorly written editorials in school newspapers.
I'll end my rant about them because I wouldn't be blazing any new trails of commentary about them.
However, what they do is what is the new problem with cable news, and actually the way the internet does the news, and one of the biggest problems I developed about the news.
Opinion.
Opinion is not news nor analysis of the news. You know the saying about opinions right? Yeah.
In order for the cable networks to try to maintain a sense of relevance, they now ask for your Tweets, your Facebook posts, your emails, and your comments at the bottom of the webpage.
What a stupid fucking idea.
One of my favorite things about The Onion is their "man on the street" interviews. Some recent topic in the news is satirized by opinions from blithering, insensitive, selfish idiots. That's what the news is doing now. Asking for your ridiculous uninformed opinion. I have absolutely no concern of what "SExYBiker57"'s thoughts on Wall Street bailout policies are. Instead of asking his opinion, why not ask that guy from a consumer advocacy groups are, ask Paul Krugman, ask the Treasury Secretary, ask someone who's opinion is informed and relevant.
These comments from every knucklehead with a network connection are not helping things. They add to the noise of our politics which honestly has been ruined by the media. There was actually a spat between CNN and FOX over the comments on their articles. Seriously, we are letting some mouth breather who calls Obama a "Nazi Communist Muslim" in their comments direct our discourse of our government? Calling someone a Nazi Communist is so fucking ignorant of political theory not to mention history (seriously Nazi Germans hated Communist Russians! Thats what a major part of WWII was about!) it makes me twitch.
I know we are all entitled to speak our minds. We all have the right of free speech and all that. We all have freedom to think what we want. However, that doesn't entitle you to have your horribly shitty opinion listened to. I'm not kidding. If you honestly want to call America a fascist police state on par with Nazi Germany, you are fucking idiot who does not deserve my time. I don't care if you want to quote Chomsky or Zinn or Nader, because much of the time their opinion is shit too.
That leads me to the point about this blog post. Newsblogs.
They suck and should not be listened to.
No really. Huffington Post is shit news. Drudge Report is shit news. The vast majority of what they spew is so biased to one side or the other they make things worse. They dredge up opinion from failed sit com writers or junior assistant D.A.'s from Birmingham Alabama to write news articles, or make comments about serious issues. Hell, most of the time Huffington post doesn't pay it's writers. The opinions spewed forth from these places that are so out of touch with reality that are given even remote consideration just make things worse. People actually cite these articles as fact based analysis, they actually steer our social discourse, they actually affect policy. You add to the fact they have no fact checking department, they have no ethical oversight, nor any writing standards. They can say whatever they want no matter how untrue, biased, or unprofessional, and we give them credence.
We are letting what happened to cable news happen to our news on the internet. We are letting our potential for true media oversight of our government and our society become the prophets wall from Monty Pythons Life of Brian.
I'm not missing that one bit, but I am missing my access to quality news on demand.
Great writing! I'm not convinced that the problems you highlight are entirely new--uninformed sensationalism in the media predates the Internet--but the glorification of opinion is certainly among the most discouraging aspects of our culture.
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