In the past CNN has been very shallow and not very imformative. They really like to gloss over most subjects. All media really has gone in this direction. Their goal is to write as if their audiance is a bunch of 5th graders. This is not a joke, this is their real goal, they figure that if a 5th grader could read it then anyone could. Most magizines and newspapers do the same thing. Local news is also this way, specifically the morning local news.
CNBC is one bright exception to this rule, they are all about business and they talk directly to smart business people, but they also stay on topic so if it is not business related they say little about it.
Each of the two men running for office spends 1-2 hours of their day talking to the media and giving speeches. The media does not air this, instead they take a short snip and just pound that for an entire day. Most people don’t have access to the actual speeches, they must rely on the media and the media is doing a really bad job. The funny thing is that they MUST fill the airwaves with something so they have people debate about small parts of these speeches.
It is like everyone is talking about the good and bad parts of a movie, and the debate goes on for hours if the movie is good or bad, but they won’t just show the movie and let us decide. They want to make sure we decide the way they want us to decide if the movie is good or not. This is a huge disservice to the audience.
CNN has broken this trend recently. They now have started to air large parts of speeches and interviews, they then have someone come on and tell you if the facts stated are true or not, then they let the viewer decide. WOW….what a revolution….people can actually decide for themselves and not be told my the media how to think!
Today they had part of a speech where McCain was talking about his energy policy, and how he has an “All of the Above” policy, get the government out of the way of all types of energy and let the market go for it. This is very different to the plan that Bush has had, but Obama has been telling everyone that McCain is McSame, the same as Bush and he said the other day that McCain supported the bush plan. But here is where the kicker comes in, McCain voted Against the Bush plan and Obama voted for it! McCain hammered this, saying “Everyone know that if you vote for something you support it and if you vote against it you oppose it, so why is he saying I supported it when I obviously did not.” The fact checker came on and said that everything McCain said was correct. He went on to say that even Paris Hilton has a better energy plan than Obama.
To be fair they talked about how Obama was just mentioning Tire Pressure in response to a question, and this is NOT his energy policy. Some crazy republicans are telling people that this is the entire Obama plan which is not true. You can read his plan on his site, I linked to it from my Drill Drill Drill blog.
They went on playing videos back and forth for quite a while….it was really good to watch.
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
For world news, I haven’t found anything better than this one: http://english.aljazeera.net/ . I know they are sometimes reviled in the west, but they are truly the only independent (and fiercely so) news organization in this part of the world and they consistently impress me with the depth of their knowledge, the clarity of their presentation, and their willingness to accurately portray both sides’ understanding of issues.
I meant to include this above, but forgot.
The channel is just as good, maybe better, in Arabic.
I can’t watch any of the US news channels anymore. Most of what they broadcast is designed to sell commercials, not to inform the public. Hype, paranoia, fear, uncertainty and doubt are the words of the day on all of them.
The BBC is okay. I don’t always agree with their slant (and yes, all news organizations have one, admitted or not, including the one I mentioned above), but they are generally clear and without all the extremist hype and nonsense.
No, television is a dead medium. I get most of my news now days from the internet and I read stories that interest me from as many different sources as possible. I’m convinced none of them give the whole story or an accurate picture, but that the truth is most likely somewhere in between all the differing perspectives.
@Matthew – I have heard a lot of good things about Aljazeera. I have seen it a few times and found that their goal is to inform people the truth. Just like you I have found that most media really is there to put a show together. Local news will hype up a story you really want to hear about, they mention it three or four times during the newscast so you wait for it, and then 30 minutes later you see the story, and it is 40 seconds and is nothing like what you thought. I have seen this over and over. Local news is by far the worst at this. CNN, is a bit better but their content is so watered down.
Another thing is that they know they don’t have to go for the hard stories, they simply go for the popular ones. It is much easier to cover the presidential race than important international news.
I have found that CNBC has very good content, and you can tell they really focus on getting the highest quality news, but they focus on business and a bit of politics. Fox News is also good some of the time, but other shows they have are total bombs. BBC is very slanted, it is also from europe and I think this is where I get the idea that european news is very liberal.
By far the internet is the best source for news.
Oh, Thanks! Really interesting. Big ups!