No more this kind of guy
I’m old enough to remember when the ‘news’ was The News. By that I mean one opened the morning newspaper, the front section was national and international news stories, the second section State and local stories, the third human interest and the fourth sports/weather.
Television was largely a similar format. Top stories up front, followed by lesser stories, perhaps one human interest story, sports and weather. And the newscasters were mostly skilled reporters – who kept their political views private. And we liked it that way.
NOW, more-and-more folks get their news via the Internet, newspapers are rapidly going the way of the buggy whip and television ‘news’ is more and more infotainment, more human interest (or sub-human interest) and less hard news. And the newscasters are pretty people with scant reporting skills. And they don’t hide their views.
A few months back, I changed the homepage on my computer from Yahoo. Even though it allowed for some editing of content (I’m not a sports fan, so I don’t care) the ‘news’ content that came through was still largely politically slanted. With views with which I disagreed. And I tired of seeing it.
SO, I changed to Google News. Not the most libertarian or Constitution-loving of the media outlets, but as compared to Yahoo, it was Reason magazine.
And it was still content-editable, to weed out sports stories and other stuff in which I had little interest.
But, here’s a selection of recent ‘news’ content. (To be fair, there was hard news, too!)
Arizona Diamondbacks bats come alive in win over Los Angeles Dodgers (AZ Republic)
Welcome to the world’s nicest prison (CNN)
Orthodox Jews Rally to Keep the Internet Kosher (Wired News)
American Idol 2012: Jennifer Lopez busts out of a VERY low cut top for ..(Daily Mail)
Ace Young proposes to Diana DeGarmo on “American Idol” finale (CBS News)
Now I know that it’s unreasonable to think a news page be “Just the facts”, and they had no stories about Jersey Shore or the Kardashian idiots, but, I’m still annoyed…
“American Idol 2012: Jennifer Lopez busts out of a VERY low cut top for ..(Daily Mail)”
Whaaaat? No pictures? Wassup with that?
See. That’s what the people want. Never mind that the USA is grinding to an oily smudge. We want JLO pics!
Posted by CoolChange | May 30, 2012, 11:25 amJELLO pictures?
(and yes, I do know who she is, sadly)
Posted by guffaw1952 | May 30, 2012, 11:28 amWalter Cronkite strove to be impartial, when he retired, he commented that in all his years of journalism, nobody was sure if he was a Democrat or a Republican, and he wasn’t going to reveal, ever.
Posted by liamburner | June 3, 2012, 8:36 pmThat’s why I chose him. Unfortunately, after he retired, he let the facade drop.
Posted by guffaw1952 | June 3, 2012, 8:48 pmYou can do that, once you retire.
Posted by CoolChange | June 4, 2012, 3:47 am