you are not my typewriter
on the drive in i occasionally fire up a podcast, or listen to bob edwards or just jump through music stations. on occasion i'm feeling less than informed, so i tune into CNN's american morning, but usually end up getting frustrated at puff pieces about american idol and whatnot. sometimes miles o'brien (not the cool one) gets a little fiesty with a government official... i was inspired when he grilled attorney general gonzales about the wiretapping thing...
anyway, this morning featured a delightful exchange between soledad o'brien, the other anchor (not married to the dude), and congresswoman cynthia mckinney, who recently punched a capitol policeman for stopping her from walking around the metal detectors at the capitol building.
VS 
let's just say that the discussion got very intense, in a "Round One... FIGHT" type of way. it was like a powerful storm of "forgive the interruption"s and "lets talk about the real issue"s and "with all due respect"s... and teeth... and fingernails... i had to turn it off about halfway through because it got too awkward. granted, the congresswoman refused to answer a simple "what happened" question, probably because she'd have to comment on an ongoing investigation. soledad simply wouldn't let it go. lawyers stepped in, harsh words were tossed around, puppies were kicked.
politicians turn CNN into Jerry Springer. wonderful.
the crew awkwardly turned to some weather after the grudge match ended, and then to the minute-of-uselessness called minding your business with andy serwer. one of the stories he was commenting on was netflix suing blockbuster for patent infringement. sadly enough, not a single one of the anchors had a lick of a clue about patent law - confusing it with copyright law, andy's "i think this sounds shady, you can't copyright a pricing structure" comment followed by soledad's "wait, isn't this intellectual property? my sister knows a lot about that..." followed by impressed oooh's and ahh's from the rest of the crew because soledad knew a buzzword. it was like listening to toddlers discuss constitutional law.
why does our whole generation get the news from the daily show? it's about as factually correct as the rest of the major news media, just as biased towards one side... but the daily show is entertaining. granted, this morning's CNN broadcast was also entertaining, but more in the fashion of a couple fighting in public. i guess we all figure, hey, if every news outlet is going to be biased, untrustworthy, and a puppet of some political or corporate interest, we might as well watch the funny one.
Certainly everyone does have a bias. Personally (some might hate me for this) I'm a big fan of Bill O'Reilly. That's right...I'm a Christian and tired of apologizing for being conservative (which does not mean I will fight to the grave defending Bush). O'Reilly allows his guests with opposing views to express their side (yes sometimes gets into a pissing match with him). Plus, Jaylene, who is not a Christian...and is much more liberal than I am...is addicted to the O'Reilly Factor. We're tired of the important stories the liberal media conveniently leaves out. All these stories about judges giving light sentences to child rapists, could be found nowhere on CNN.com, which I also read. O'Reilly has made it a mission on his show to bring justice to these freaks. Anyway...I admit we do get most of our news from the O'Reilly Factor....as do many Americans according to ratings. Also...Cynthia McKinney needs to stop playing the race card and accept the fact that she does not get special treatment because she is a Congresswoman. Now this poor security guard who was doing his job is in the national news being called racist and has been accused of touching her in a sexual manner. What a bunch of bunk. There is a good reason the McKinney won't give details about the incident.
Yeah, Bias is the heart of the issue. Some local news stations can contain their bias long enough to actually just report the news, but increasingly, the national news media cannot. The big question is which came first, the sponsorship or the bias?
The daily show is watched in my house because it's the same news (kinda), but because people know not to take it so seriously, they're almost more real about things. Also, its entertainment value helps make it less depressing to watch.
(the daily show starts at 11)
we have to assume that every news source is run by a human being or a group of human beings with opinions - therefore there is no such thing as a news source without bias. there never has been, unfortunately.
i use google news, which IMHO is the closest i feel i can get to unbiased news, merging thousands of sources into one location. even though every site is biased, i can get a fairly even balance of both sides' coverage of a given topic. seems to work okay.
that's an interesting point - the only news i need to keep up on is really terrorist threats and military operations. besides that it's not really required for my day-to-day work.
Well done!
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