Why TV news in the US is utter rubbish

It's not just that world events are ignored in favour of celebrity gossip. News anchors skew the facts to provoke debate

Kieren McCarthy

www.guardian.co.uk...

For years it has been a joke that news in the United States is terrible: obsessed with trivia and celebrity; fronted by Botox bimbos; forever interviewing citizens about some artefact of small-town life when a major news story is breaking elsewhere.

Well, the truth is that it's far, far worse than that. There are a multitude of news channels - CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox. But after an hour of flipping between them during lunchtime last week, this was the sum total of information gleaned: there are two US presidential candidates; they have produced campaign ads; people have made video parodies and posted them on the internet; a US TV news host appeared on a US TV chatshow last night; and someone said something controversial (read ignorant) on a different TV show the day before.

In the meantime, one of the most sought-after war criminals in the world had been arrested and sent for trial; several new scientific breakthroughs had been announced; Zimbabwe edged carefully toward shared government; the Indian government dealt with votes of no-confidence and terrorist attacks; and countless other real stories came and went. For millions of Americans, these events appeared as 15-word tickertapes at the bottom of their 36-inch widescreen TVs.

It's not the absolute dearth of real news that is the problem, however. It's the fact that the news that is presented isn't news but mindless, misleading gossip.

www.guardian.co.uk...



[edit on 7-8-2008 by Dubyakadubla]

You might find the following OP in the following thread interesting: Media abandons America
It's a pretty honest and thorough expose on the state of the American media.

Originally posted by schrodingers dog
You might find the following OP in the following thread interesting: Media abandons America
It's a pretty honest and thorough expose on the state of the American media.

Thanks, your article says it all in an in depth focus, which deserves to be published so that the sheepheads could kick the addiction of assuming that the TV is the ultimate mouthpiece.

I agree, I don't watch anything above local news anymore.