At least, not until my father began to ask such suggestive questions, with some measure of anger mixed with resignation.
There were quite a few things that he did not like about the American news. Specifically, he did not like that they barely ever talked about what was happening around the world outside of American borders, unless it had some kind of major impact on Americans themselves. He was particularly incensed about a little clock that they would show on the corner of the screen for the minute that they would designate towards what was happening around the world. He said that it was insulting, and essentially catered to the lowest common denominator, essentially an attempt by these newscasts to tell the viewers to just hang in there for one minute while they had to show the world news, and then they would return to the more local news as told by television personalities.
Another aspect of the news that he really disliked is evidenced in the video link below, and in a very humorous way, at that. He remembered them making a big deal out of the means with which they would report what they referred to as "the news," even if the news that they reported on was hardly worth telling. Specifically, he was tired of the lofty sounding names given to employ technology towards covering the news. The two examples that come to mind that seemed to have particularly incensed him was the "Accu Trak Weather" and "News Chopper 4." The stations had commercials essentially showing these off, and they never failed to announce when the viewing audience would be given live reports from these things.
He was right, of course. And in time, it has only grown worse.
Again, here is a short and very humorous video by the Onion which perfectly illustrates how the news has become very hyped, albeit far less substantive:
That was funny.
But it is funny for a sad reason, because it is the truth. The fact of the matter is that the major American news media, generally speaking, is a lot like that. They take small stories and blow them way out of proportion, making you think that these stories are relevant to your life, or are far more important, when they clearly are not. In the meantime, some truly major things have happened that do affect us, but we barely, if ever, hear about them, at least in a substantive way, if we rely on the major news media. Things like growing income disparity and how many people are falling through the cracks. Things like the failure of our healthcare system to adequately cover many of the insured, let lone the tens of millions who remain uninsured. Things like corporate scandals becoming the norm, probably specifically because there is a lack of press coverage (and thus, pressure) keeping them in check. Things like specific examples of the countless scandalous chapters of corruption within the government, which would reveal how little the government is actually "of the people, by the people, and for the people" any longer. Things like politicians lying to us to get us to do things that are clearly against our interests (such as the ill-fated invasion of Iraq, a mistake which clearly still has ramifications in the region right to the present day).
The fact of the matter is that the major news media has failed us, but it has failed us basically on purpose. It is no accident that the big major media outlets are owned by private corporations with vested interests, and again, I use the example of the Iraq war to illustrate the conflict of interests involved. The corporations that owned these major American media outlets had a vested interest in that war. And since there was a lack of substance to the charges that led to justifying that unjustifiably war, many people were duped (although I personally think that many people duped themselves, inwardly knowing better, but refusing to acknowledge this out loud).
In any case, I am getting ahead of myself.
This started with the funny video about all of the fake news out there, delivered in an extremely inflated manner.
No comments:
Post a Comment