Thoughts on News

I first wrote about the news on May 18, 2017.

I was listening to a news program this morning.  It is a news podcast called Up First from NPR.  It comes out at 6am every morning so it is a good place to get the news first thing in the morning.  I was struck by how little news was in that 12 minute podcast.  For example, they stated that President Trump spoke to a crowd in Warsaw Poland.  That is true.  Then they began to talk about what the president was thinking and what he meant and what he should have done.  They never stated what he said, but spend several minutes talking about their impression and hatred for this man.  I counted three facts that were stated and could be verified in the 12 minutes.  The rest was political opinion.  This is what passes for news today.

I remember Paul Harvey and his daily “News and Comment.”  Mr Harvey would say something like this:  “A ferry capsized in Bangladesh this morning, killing more than 140 people.”  And that was it.  No opinion, no commentary.  We got the facts, they could be verified and if I want more information I could get on the Internet or turn on the TV or go to some other news source.   Then on to the next set of facts, with no opinion.  That is news.  News is verifiable information.

What we have today is opinion shows and not news.  There may be some verifiable facts in the mix but mostly the news readers are telling the people what to think and feel about the news story.  They are trying to lead us by the hand to either be happy or sad or angry or whatever.  As I have stated before, politics is in everything and political lines are being drawn everywhere.  It seems that what used to pass for news programs 20 years ago are nothing more than cheer leaders for their political side.  Various studies of how news programs speak about people seem to indicate that news programs and 24 news channels like FOX and CNN are nothing more than political parties, supporting or opposing candidates.

Programs are on TV to make money.  There are rare cases where there are public or community access programs, but generally, people put things on TV to make money.  Money is made thorough advertising, like Google and Facebook.  The more eyes that are on a program or a website, the more people can charge for advertising.  Project Veritas went undercover to CNN and people at CNN admitted that the story of President Trump being a Russian puppet were untrue, but great for ratings, great for making money.  So they will keep doing it.

Fortunately for the people of the world, there are countless sources to get news.  Most of them post news for free on Twitter, Facebook and the Web.   If people want facts, they can find it, usually for free.  The intelligent news consumer will no longer want to be fed the political opinions from the mainline news organizations.  Instead they will find news their own way and get the just the facts and nothing but the facts.

#Thoughts on News#