All the News that’s Fit to Poop On
That’s it. I’m done with American news media. And, CNN.com, it’s all your fault. Here’s a sampling* of the headlines they’re running on that once-reputable source for news:
- White-out hinders search for hikers
- 50 million blinds recalled
- Big gay marriage vote today
- Dreamliner ready for first flight
- Source: Dems to drop Medicare buy-in
- Tiger’s wife spotted without ring
- Love loses custody of daughter
- Chris Brown’s f-laced Twitter fit
- Sweat-lodge guru ignores cries
- Chris Brown kills Twitter account
- New ads show people drinking fat
- Gaps in young folks’ sex knowledge
Forget that 33% of the “headlines” I chose to run with are straight-up celebrity gossip (CNN, when did you and your counterparts become Entertainment Tonight?). Ignore the thought that half of them are specifically designed to stir up completely unreasonable fear. Look past the idea that almost all of these stories have some kind of consumerist bent. Let’s focus on one simple fact: absolutely none of it is relevant to the daily lives of 99.9% of Americans.
In this country, 304 million people do things every day. Good things, bad things, impactful things. The kinds of things that we should all be learning about when we check in to CNN.com. Instead, we get the bitter and filtered end of the cigarette that is sensationalist news. We get the 0.1% of “newsworthy” things that have to do with violence in a Middle-Eastern country, untimely death, product recalls, tragedy for some rich, young, pretty, and almost always white person, natural disasters, celebrity sex scandals, and political hot-button topics that, in any sane society, would’ve been resolved in a matter of minutes, rather than months and years.
What in the hell?
I know I’m not telling you anything new here, reader. It’s just bugging me this morning, is all. The sad thing is that there’s no real answer. As long as people keep tuning into this shit, they’ll keep running it. And who could blame them? Money is nice. The only thing I can hope for is the continued degredation of quality in all of these media sources. If they get bad enough, maybe people will finally see the light and hold them accountable.
*Disclaimer: like a good modern journalist, I’ve only chosen the headlines that best serve my point. There’s a small handful of others currently running on CNN.com (some of them about crises in the Middle East, some about natural disasters that haven’t even occurred yet, and some about early favorites for the Golden Globes). I’ll let you decide whether they’re worthy of your time and concern.
