DardangoBlog

News Nonsense

I guess it's been hard to write of late. We're just bombarded with such B.S. all day everyday that it's hard to see straight sometimes.

A typical example was this morning when I was watching my local news. A backbench NBC reporter named Tracie Potts comes on and explains that the hold up with renewing the Patriot Act was essentially caused by a few rogue Democrats, when everyone and his brother knows that it was members of the GOP like Lincoln Chafee and a few others who had concerns about protection of civil liberties that was the major hinderance to renewal of this monstrosity.

Either Ms. Potts is ignorant of what goes in Washington or she painted the story this way in order to appeal to a certain markets. I tend to believe it's a bit of both. I looked up a bit more about and found that she has spent much of her career covering entertainment and human interests stories. So what the hell is she doing covering politcal stories now with that kind of media background? It kind of reminds me of when the classical music reviewer is asked to review a Thelonius Monk record in one of these popular magazines.

This is all symptomatic of the state of journalism today and the blending of entertainment and news. Barbie dolls who have no clue of what real journalism is about are put in front of a camera to give us some version of a story that is the most entertaining telling of the story.

As someone who has supported the rights of journalists, I must say that it is pretty pathetic to realize that what passes for news today in this country is actually contributing to the decline of this country and the very idea of democracy in America.

posted by Dar @ 8:26 PM