:: the "liberal" news media
Sometimes when I come home at night after a long day, and sometimes when my mind has expressed its daily extent and can't express anymore, I like to vegetate. In the past I've been very hard on myself because I've seen this as a weekness, times spent watching TV when I could've been reading or doing homework
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I only sometimes watch CNN to know what other people THINK is going on in the world. It is like watching 4-year-olds trying to be parents, except they're evil and not really easy on the eye.
"is this news, or is this entertainment?"
Good question. Of course, I find that's easy to answer. Entertainment does not rely on giving the cold hard truth, and CNN et al. give you more than, and sometimes even less than, just the plain truth. The truth is always distorted with these networks. You might as well watch a David Lynch movie instead.
And yes, sadly, every channel is beginning to "feel" like CNN. But if you want to see even more unbelievable crap, flip to FOX NEWS and be prepared for some neuronic atrophy.
"I think that the cardinal sin of these networks is that they flounder in their responsibility to provide news."
They don't care about responsibility, they only care about the amount of people that buy what they say. It's a kind of advertisement. The more they are "responsible", the more confident they appear. The more confident they appear, the more credible they appear. The more credible they appear, the more they are relied on---you get the point. They're quite analogous to the way infomercials work. Responsibility is not what these networks are concerned with; they just want the money.
"They've, essentially, become political mouth pieces where audiences are passively made cognizant of political "hot button" topics presented in a way laced through and through with a political perspective, packaging not just the "cold hard" news BUT ALSO YOUR REACTIONS. The news channels have, in a sense, taken on too much responsibility, beyond the responsibility of simply providing the news (objectivity). They're now interpreting it for us, and shaping our opinions of the information as it flows in, in real time. HOW CONVENIENT."
This is what i find most enraging--that they tell people what to think and manipulate them into thinking that the information they are getting must be translated to them in specific terms so that they may understand. It's sort of like they are implicitly telling the viewers that they are stupid, and in a way, they really are stupid for watching them.
They leave no ambiguities for the viewers though--no chance to interpret things on their own. Those who seek out news beyond the mainstream route are left sifting truth from fiction with strained mental sieves because everything that surrounds them tells them to blindly take it in instead.
It's almost impossible to let people acknowledge this We can only try to detoxify our own minds from this propagandistic gunk.
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It's very depressing how much Americans lean on this kind of infantile, watered down media then they do on real, honourable sources.
I recently started working at a job that involves talking to Americans via telephone. To be honest, I never had a high-opinion of the average American "Joe" to begin with, but after having worked there, my opinion is even lower than it was before (sadly).
Some Americans I've spoked to don't even know where Canada is, others think it is in the Middle East (sadly). It's almost as if the American education system only educates Americans to concern themselves with... themselves, and to act as if a world doesn't exist beyond Americans continental waters (or borders).
CNN and media like it, probably the most popular source for learning about the world for most Americans, reinforce this kind of binary thinking.
Sometimes I thought of moving to the United States, because the economy is better and there are more jobs there than here. However, I don't think I'd fit in at all. Not to sound like an over-exaggeration, but the way that country is going, I wouldn't be surprised if they hung people like me in five years.
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