Here lies respectable
Journalism.
It will be missed
It's a sad day when you can find more news in a 30 minute comedy show than a 24-hour
"news" station.
Journalism used to be about uncovering wrongs. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein helped uncover Nixon's Watergate Scandal. Nellie Bly, checked herself into a mental hospital, published an insiders account, and got the place shut down.
Today Journalism is at an all time low. If you expect to turn on one of the 24-hour stations and find news, you are out of luck. However, if you watch a 24-hour station looking for mindless entertainment, you'll get what you want.
There are only two news programs where you can expect to find any news today. They are The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. They're comedy shows, but they have more news than CNN and Fox News combined.
In fact, a tabloid magazine has more news than CNN and Fox.
Lets talk about CNN. Every day people die in Iraq. There is genocide going on in Darfur. What does CNN spend the majority of time covering? Tom Cruise and Paris Hilton.
I hope I speak for the rest of America when I say, "I am sick and tired of hearing about Paris Hilton. It is not an interesting story, so shut up about it."
Then there is Fox "News." It's not news . It's a talk show. It's not fair and balanced. It's a right wing talk show.
Fortunately, Journalism is not dead. There is still hope. Citizen Journalists are the ones who will continue the tradition of uncovering wrongs. Bloggers are the future hope for Journalism.
When Trent Lott made the racist comment, it went unnoticed by all the major news stations. Bloggers are the ones who uncovered it. Afterwards the news stations picked up on it.
The tradition of Journalism is noble and good. Since the current media has given up that nobility and goodness, we must turn to bloggers.
3 comments:
Watch BBC. It's at least a little better than CNN, in my opinion.
maybe you should switch to print media. while many of the newspapers are biased [left or right], you can look at how different papers cover the same story. I am a fan of the liberal leaning NYTimes.
It's a bit of an ugly process. In india, when private 24 hour news channels first came, they did do better than the government to publicise all the alarming amounts of corruption, but in a matter of 10 years or so, they've managed to completely lose thier cause and purpose and now focuss on publicising celebrity fantasies. Quite simply, for these corporate minds in the private news channels, the amount of money got from airing crap outweighs importance of real issues. That's been the problem all the while..even outside news channels.. that's exaclty what's happening to Africa and aid.
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