Crap, Not News
The first in our series of articles from what would have been our next print issue. Here, with more of his ranty stylings, is an article from our very own Angry Zen Master. -Neomera
The morning of September 11, 2001, I sat in my living room starring unblinkingly at the television. I had just seen the second tower fall live on CNN and I needed someone to explain just what the hell was going on. My mind could not perceive such horrors let alone process seeing it all happen in real time. I needed more information. And for the next few hours, for the next few days, CNN streamed information into my brain meats faster than I could absorb.
The September 11 attacks really put news organizations on the front page. Never before had the twenty-four hour news cycle been so challenged with keeping a frightened, angry, and hurt public as informed as humanly possible. They did their best to stream information to the public as quickly and efficiently as possible without tainting stories with spin or punditry.
The twenty-four hour news cycle was working, keeping the public well armed with raw information. Thusly armed, we gradually recovered from our initial fears.
It’s now more than six years later and when I turn on CNN, I’m subjected to uninterrupted coverage of OJ Simpson’s pre-trial hearing, Miss Teen South Carolina’s gaff when asked a geography question, Britney’s latest public humiliation, Tay Zonday singing about Cherry Chocolate Rain. The same twenty-four hour news cycle that calmed a terrified people is now filling hours with sensationalist tabloid fluff. They’ve traded journalism for entertainment.
Cable network news is all about ratings. They will do anything to appear to be relevant. There’s no better example than CNN’s YouTube Presidential candidate debates. On paper, it certainly seemed like a good idea. Young people complain all the time that Presidential candidates and politicians are truly out of touch, that they don’t care about the issues that are important to the average citizen, that they’ve sold our government out to special interests. What better way to prove these conceptions wrong than by giving the public the opportunity to address the candidates themselves. Sure, that’s a winner of an idea.
I have never witnessed so many softball questions at any sort of debate ever. Instead of taking the candidates to task for the failures of the past six years, the questions presented the candidates the perfect opportunity to reiterate all their campaign rhetoric. There was no real debate, no real discussion, no real information. CNN might as well have aired three hours of campaign ads.
The twenty-four hour news cycle has completely destroyed news journalism. Gone are the days of in-depth investigative reporting. Objectivism has given way to opinion pieces, punditry, and ultimately, sensationalism. The latest hit on YouTube is given as much air time as Bush’s insistence that Iran is still pursuing nuclear weapons. It’s nearly impossible to take the cable news networks seriously.
These days, I can’t help but smirk every time I hear James Earl Jones recite CNN’s tagline, “The most trusted name in news.” It should read, “The most trusted name in tabloid news entertainment.”
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January 6th, 2008 at 9:35 am
The problem here is that only half the candidates have served in federal office for the last six years the rest are all state governors. As such they have little bearing on national policy, especially since this administration is highly opposed to decentralizing any of its power (unlike what good republicans are supposed to like). So it’s very hard to take many of them to task for the failures of the last 6 years since they had nothing to do with it.
And then there’s Kucinich who has been opposed to all the bad decisions but is basically a lone voice of dissent in the house. As well as Obama has only been senator for four years (of my state) and has spent at least the last year campaigning. So he wasn’t around when the these decisions went into action in the first place, he was a state senator of Il. So it’s hard to take these folks to task when they were’nt involved with what happened in the first place.
For me i get around the awfulness of TV news by not watching it. I get my info from NPR, the BBC, Nytimes, The Economist, Al Jazeera,
and a host of other news outlets. This is me, find what works for you.