Crapola News Network
I was flipping through television stations earlier this evening and briefly came across Anderson Cooper on CNN. As the station coalesced on my LCD screen, I caught him saying, "We'll keep you apprised of the oil spill in the Gulf as it happens. We will hold BP and the government accountable for their actions."
Yeah, right. Do the cable news stations really think they still have credibility? Have they managed to convince themselves that the crap spewing from their gaping maws is actually untainted fact? They've misreported, embellished, and twisted so many stories over the past couple of decades that it's almost impossible to tell what's real and what isn't. I can tell you right now that CNN doesn't give a rat's ass about holding BP accountable for the Gulf oil spill. All they care about is their bottom line. They will report this story whichever way nets them the most viewers and the most money.
I've largely stopped watching the news. I get my information as factual tidbits from raw Internet news feeds. And why not? When you think about it, the BP story can be distilled into a single headline: "BP oil rig explodes, oil leaking into Gulf of Mexico, problem yet unresolved." Done. It's not necessary to have a stone-faced reporter, with a pulsing forehead vein, speaking emphatically into a camera while clips of black sludge belching from an underwater vent loops in the background. What the hell does this do for the average US citizen? Nothing. It just whips people into a frenzy, sows fear & panic, and gets them to keep watching.
News, in it's pure form, is dead, folks. The days of Walter Cronkite are far behind us. No longer does television news seek to educate. Instead it seeks to stir up emotion and draw forth primal reflex - a task that is best left to the fiction wizards in Hollywood.