Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge I read the news today, oh boy...

A day in the life..



I keep up with world and local news on a daily basis and consider myself to be somewhat well informed. I've always seemed to find the news interesting and of value in forming my opinions on social, political, and economic issues.

Lately however, it seems that I have almost began detesting hearing any news or listening to motormouth, talking head, news commentators. I'm guessing it's the "everything and everyone is looking kind of bleak and negative" dynamic.

This includes issues associated with Politics, Social, Health, Imigration, Economy, Energy, Enviroment, Aging, Education, Religion, and Crime, etc. etc.etc. .......

Anyone else starting to feel this way?

I have an uneasy feeling that we are entering a kind of mid 1960's climate again and that there are some issues just on the immediate horizon that are going to pop.



Ahhh ..I feel better now.

Mainstream news is probably the lowest form of news, if you could call it news. I haven't formed an informed opinion from them for years. I cringe when in a discussion with another citizen and hear them parrot back cnn, cbs, etc.

just a note: keep the AUP in mind when responding to this thread. if it gets out of hand or breaches the AUP, it will nuked.

The press is bought and paid for by those who make the news. If you are a main stream news network or newspaper they withhold access to you. Thats a fate worse than death. So you simply get along and never ask the hard questions.

You do know that you have to be invited to the big press conferences and pre-submit the questions. They pick what they will answer and who they call on. Its not news, its a show.

40 years ago the FBI would not be taking down the Gov. of New York, the press would have found that. They may have actually left the air conditioned building, put down their blackberry, made a few calls and followed somebody. What a novel idea. The press digging for a story. Those days are gone. Now the right or left of the media depends on the right or left of who controls that particular branch of the media. Not that Mr. Murdock would ever lean right

The other down side is the bloggers that many times rant on about something and don't verify anything. That too can start a firestorm of misinformation. The trick to survival is to read lots of sources and believe nothing at first glance.

Personally I prefer lots of pictures so I don't have to think too hard.

The main stream media has an agenda that is not what it should be.

Creating an atmosphere of hate, angst and improper attitudes is the standard bearer of the media today.

Thats why we are as a country lesser than we were in my fathers day.

There was a time when the news was just the news as opposed to being a propaganda tool for the left or the right.

Imagine tuning in to view the news and simply hearing it straight out without any form of opinionating at all.

Imagine being allowed to form your own opinion from many forms of information. (read education and knowledge of history and current events garnered from sources other than CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC or FOX.) As opposed to some talking head who raves about the "worlds worst person" (Who might those worlds worst persons be?)

As it is we have "sheeple" who rely on heavily biased media to detrmine their opinions for them as opposed to actually being informed and educated adequately to determine right from wrong or left from right.

I don't know that I buy the media being biased so much as much as maybe there is just TOO much time to fill and they are too interested in ratings. In days of yore, you had the nightly news, and it was exactly that, News, international, national, local, weather and sports. Nothing else!! Now, for every story, there have to be 4 spinoff talk shows on CNN, FOX, etc..., where they bring in "experts" to debate AD NAUSEUM every detail!!!! So, if you cull out actual news from any one of these networks, you end up with about 23 1/2 hours of debate, editorial, advertisement, human interest, etc..., and 30 minutes (if you're lucky) of actual news being reported (without the rehashing!). A good case in point is the recent Spitzer nonsense. Now the Lt. Gov. has admitted that he and his wife each had affairs SEVERAL years ago, and almost every one of the networks is trying desperately to spin this into Spitzer-The Sequel, even though it's not remotely the same (from what little I've seen of it) But my point is, they do this to almost every story. This weekend CNN ran through the top stories, among them 17 tornados that hit South Carolina, so I sat there for 20 minutes waiting for them to come back to that. Instead, they centered on 3 stories about Spitzer, and never went back to the South Carolina story so I could see where it was (and if it was near where I used to live) Then (not that I was watching!), I'm quite sure the rest of the day was centered around Spitzermania (at least until Britney comes back).

The problem is that media is a business like any other - if it sells subscriptions/advertisements/air time, it's news. Otherwise it's buried in the B section or after the weather.

Even the wire services compete to have their stories bought, so you end up with things like when Reuters photoshopped the Beirut pic.

It's like Hollywood; you have to have blood, explosions, and sex to be a blockbuster.

And the blogs are worse than useless - pretty much any time you see a "story" on a blog, you can google it and find that story repeated on about 12 sites, all quoting the original.
Example is a "news story" that got posted on a current events forum I frequent, about a tax-evader winning his case against the government, mentioning various US codes and precendent cases by case number. A bunch of people got all excited and passed along as truth. I did a two-minute search and found that none of the cases mentioned were real (findlaw.org is great) and US codes were made up.
But people who aren't a suspicious SOB like me might buy these blogs as bald truth that the MSM is "hiding".

What really ****** me off was the total lack of coverage of the bombing of an Army recruiting station in Times Square the other week. Hello - terrorist acts in NEW YORK CITY? You'd think that sort of thing might be news to some people especially considering where it happened...
I only found out from my buddy that works in Brooklyn. WTF, CNN?