The media changes in this country in the past 60 years have been like covered wagons to rockets. In the olden days of my childhood if you lived in a 'city', television consisted of one independent channel to go along with the three network channels. TV ended at midnight when they played the national anthem and went off the air. (FYI - my ass was supposed to be inside my house by the time the last note of the anthem ended or it was grass, and not in a good way.)
Almost everyone I knew had the same news day. You woke up to the radio to listen to tunes and find out the weather and latest sports scores. Then, you read the morning newspaper to find out the local news (mainly) either over breakfast or on the way to work. In the evening, if you hadn't read a paper yet, you read the evening paper. Around dinnertime you tuned into the news: 30 minutes of national news and 30 minutes of local news. Done. Finished. For the true news junkies who thought the rest of the world was important, they subscribed to Time or Newsweek magazine which was delivered to their mailboxes once a week. Sounds unreal, doesn't it?
It was a completely reasonable expectation every journalist who produced ANY of the above news presented facts unless the story was on the editorial page, then it was editorial opinion. Period. The only up front analysis of the news (OPINION) took place on Sunday morning. Meet the Press started on radio, began on TV in 1947, and was pretty quickly copied by the other networks.
What upset this neat little package? Ted Turner started the Cable News Network as a way to bulk up cable programming. Of course, there were a zillion other factors that caused the upset, but here's my point: There's not enough news Americans are interested in to fill 24 hours a day, seven days a week. By news I mean FACT REPORTING. So, how is all that airtime being filled? With analysis (OPINION) and filler about subjects which are called news but aren't. And we were off to races.
The whole definition of what is news has changed. Not only is opinion presented as fact, but there's wholesale dumping of factoids, gossip, and outright lies surrounding the cult of the entertainment figure all of which is being presented to us as news. Cult worship not news. I was really floored when I realized there's a significant number of people who get their 'news' playing around on Facebook or Twitter parroting what they see posted there and passing it on as fact.
We also have bloggers whose sole desire is to make a living by typing an article once a day and acquiring enough readers, so they can sell advertising and pay themselves a salary. Many of them will write anything. An alarming number do NOT uphold the rigorous journalistic standards taught in journalism schools (because they've never been) and, thus, are accountable only to themselves. There's no journalistic community overlord upholding standards anymore not only for their own integrity, but also so the public can trust what they say or write.
Does anyone who is presenting what is labelled as news today ever say as a disclaimer, "Notice: The fact is the first sentence and everything after that is opinion." No, of course not. Then the whole problem of who to believe and what are the actual facts (I refuse to use the word 'truth') is additionally compounded by is it 'red news' or 'blue news'.
I guess what's confounding me this election season is where can I find unbiased news. I'm looking for the actual facts not drowned by hyperbole, vitriol, screaming talking heads interrupting one another, or modified by an agenda. If you flip through the news channels at the top of the hour, it's fascinating to see the lead story isn't usually the same on each channel. Actual falsehoods do not even have to be uttered; instead, it's just a matter of parsing the sound bites and time allocation.
This is a call for you to think for yourself and question the sales techniques manipulating you. Question who's reporting, how much time is given to an issue, and how quickly are you hearing talking heads. Are you only seeing a fact wrapped in an opinion on a crawler at the bottom of the screen? Take all bloggers who are 'sharing the facts' with a large, large grain of salt. And, for Pete's sake, anything on Facebook or Twitter is not news. Use more than one reputable source of news. Always watch Fox News? Switch to CNN, or even NPR for a few days.
I have a few trusted news sources, and I ignore everything else. I immediately tune out the talking heads. After I've heard the facts, I will make up my own mind, thank you. I neither need nor want the 'spin' or the 'slant' or the opinionated expert. All those tactics to shape news just leave me seething.
I have a few trusted news sources, and I ignore everything else. I immediately tune out the talking heads. After I've heard the facts, I will make up my own mind, thank you. I neither need nor want the 'spin' or the 'slant' or the opinionated expert. All those tactics to shape news just leave me seething.
I'll leave you with this one thought - Do a check: Ask yourself, Is this a 'fact' or an 'opinion' as you read or listen to news. Sometimes you actually have to listen carefully to each sentence uttered or written. You'll be amazed at the result. (For those of you who have forgotten: a fact is something that can be proven by empirical evidence, experimentation, and/or consensus observation.) I could give a little quiz at this point, but I have faith in you.
[Was that last sentence a fact or an opinion?] See what I mean......
