I finish house- and dog-sitting for my neighbor today. While the dog went out for her morning romp in the yard, I decided to turn on the TV and see what was on the morning news. Mostly, I wanted to see the local weather report (Autumn 2: Electric Boogaloo incoming!), but I also got a chance to see something I rarely watch: Network morning news.
Ugh.
Plastic people in an over-produced New York corporate conglomerate pre-packaged product just rub me the wrong way. The shallowness of reporting on real news combined with pointless feel-good stories felt like blatant manipulation. The cheering fans in the street treating these talking heads like personal idols was off-putting. And it's all layered with HD graphics and extraneous sound effects that indicate entertainment rather than education.
I know this appeals to a lot of people, but it isn't news. Feel-good stories interspersed with shallow reporting on socio-political and economic matters looks like information, but isn't. This is why alternative media online is relevant. Sure, it can be openly biased, but it can also result in actual investigative journalism and in-depth analysis of the issues at hand.
TV News: "The Democrats are pushing forward their plans to impeach Trump."
Online sources: "Here are the transcripts, the context for the situation, the legal qualifications for impeachment, and our opinions on the subject."
Whether pro or con, it's at least more than a 30-second sound bite.
Another thing that always irks me is the focus. Did it happen in NYC, DC, LA, or Chicago? "It's news, no matter how mundane!" Did it happen anywhere in between? "Who cares? We can't even tell the difference between Iowa, Idaho, and Ohio." Having lived adjacent to two out of those three states, I can say with some confidence that yes, there is a difference. But to the self-important New Yorkers, it's all "the midwest," or "flyover country," and they know what's best for us politically and economically as they dictate from their ivory tower skyscrapers.
There is a place for feel-good fluff pieces, and morning news programs probably shouldn't delve deep into serious issues, but the evening news isn't exactly an improvement. Local news, national news, weather reports, and most importantly, sports, are all crammed into a short presentation with no room for analysis or nuance. It's just enough to give the illusion of being informative. Journalism seems to be a dying art in the mainstream media. No, that's not quite right. It isn't dying. It's more like it is committing slow suicide. Yellow journalism, muckraking, editorial bias, and selective reporting have always been problems, but it seems to me that instead of just slouching along, it is insisting that we are uninformed unless we go along with its empty narrative of escalating nothingness. I want real news, not these shallow shills passing themselves off as accredited news sources.
[/rant]