No News is Bad News

We are currently in the biggest recession in decades. The jobless rate is the highest in a quarter of a century. The car industry is failing and the stock market is fluctuating wildly. We just elected the first black president who is in the process of picking his Cabinet and key staff. The Governor of Illinois is selling off Obama’s empty Senator’s seat. Not to forget we are still at war. I don’t mean to depress you but I mention all this because with everything going on you would think that the three major networks could easily fill their respective half hour news shows each night, right? Well apparently not.

Yes the news anchors do briefly mention most of the major headlines of the day but after the first fifteen minutes of news they then announce something along the lines of “Coming up next is part 8 of our 15 part special on bridges in America – are they falling down or not”? OK so that is somewhat important but isn’t that better suited to Dateline or Primetime or some other cable news show? Isn’t there more than enough hard news in a given day to fill up a half hour?

Maybe it is cheaper to do those “stories” but then the networks wonder why they are losing viewers. Gee. Maybe it’s because you don’t do real news anymore during the evening news! And while I am at it, how come they never tell us what is happening elsewhere in the world? Oh sure, they are quick to do stories on how dumb Americans are and how most don’t even know the name of Canada’s Prime Minister. But they never tell us what is going on elsewhere unless it is famine or disaster in a third world or if it is something bad caused by America. They supposedly have all these foreign correspondents so what do they do all day? Make them earn their pay and actually report on stuff! Or bring them back here and send them to someplace other than DC, New York City and LA – now that really would be foreign territory to those elitist newsmen and women!

Sure there are the 24-7 cable news channels but even they aren’t any help at times. During prime time all the cable news channels have their own “shows”; Larry King, Bill O’Reilly, Nancy Grace etc. so there aren’t any up-to-date “live” news available. Then there have been times I can’t sleep and I would turn on the TV and figure watching news would put me back to sleep. Wrong. All these “news” cable stations repeat their earlier shows over and over again all night long. So after about 8pm eastern time you can’t find any real news until the next morning! I’m afraid that eventually the cable “news” shows will become like the cable “music” channels where you can no longer find any music videos on MTV or VH1.

With daily newspapers quickly disappearing it makes me wonder where people are getting their news. Even the weekly news magazines are starting to fold. The thought that people are becoming less and less informed about everything is a scary idea. I can only hope that the internet is filling in the gap and people are getting their news and informing themselves by going on-line. Yeah right. When one of the top words googled is Britney Spears I am not comforted by that thought. Then again, perhaps the lack of news and educated people explains the results of the recent election!