Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Hooray for cable news

A coworker of mine in the sports department has sworn off ESPN (the ubiquitous sports news organization) because it homogonizes content and encourages a lack of original sports content.

Maybe it's time I took his lead and swore off cable news. After all, when a workspace love triangle is front-page news on Fox and CNN — even when the workspace is NASA — it just might be a sign that our supposedly vaunted commercial news organizations are interested in profits more than responsible reporting.

I know, I know, how could this possibly be true? News networks owned by millionaires and billionaires who were ruthless in their acquisition of capital couldn't possibly put dollar signs over the issues that really matter in our lives, right? Silly me to question their integrity.

Of course, maybe it's just coincidence that the Spaced-out Lovers (as this site will now refer to the NASA threesome) were a good excuse to wipe off the front page: GOP leaders refusing to debate the merits of an Iraq war strategy even though it's at the forefront in the minds of many Americans; a budget that assumes the middle class will in future years pay an even higher percentage of the country's income tax because of the increasingly burdensome Minimum Alternative Tax; and that global warming is indeed a human-created event but that we're still unwilling to institute the changes necessary to save our planet.

That's just a sample. I can go on. But I think you get the idea.

Trust cable news to provide you with the hard-hitting reporting on things you need to know about. So long as a single mayor isn't canoodling with a friend's wife or a crazed astronaut isn't attempting to kidnap a romantic rival.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is also noticed with the Anna Nicole debacle. I mean honestly, this woman was a cracked up druggie and there are people dying in a war we were lied to about. Its hard to know what to believe these days when it comes to the news. Thank God for Stephen Colbert haha