Tag: cable news networks

I Can’t Take The Lying

Somewhere along the line news has turned into uncensored propaganda. Who’s served by that?

The presidential campaign is getting ugly. Obama and McCain are both slinging mud. OK–I think McCain is slinging more, but it really doesn’t matter. He’s way behind and sees no other way. I can’t justify that, but I almost understand his frustration.

Here’s the part I can’t take anymore–the lying by surrogates! Uhhh… guys… sometimes even your candidate’s shit stinks. No one’s perfect. Not even your guy.

Why must you reframe the argument or not even bother answering whenever it suits you? Do you think we don’t see?

These surrogates would be nowhere with their enablers–mostly (but not totally) the cable news networks with their voracious appetite for content. Notice I didn’t say good or bad content, just content! If the cablers would start making the surrogates answer for the words coming out of their mouths this would stop.. or at least it would slow down–I’ll take what I can get.

Somewhere along the line news has turned into uncensored propaganda. Who’s served by that?

The Bailout

If you can’t afford it, I don’t want governmental policy encouraging you to borrow. There’s something fundamentally wrong with loans that can only be made when usurious rates must be charged. Hey, Gary Coleman–I’m talking to you.

I am an opinionated guy. I have a position on nearly every public issue. I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad. It’s just how it is.

That’s why this whole bailout issue is so perplexing. I have no idea where I stand!

I am worried what will happen to our country if our banking and financial system fails. Maybe it is to big to fail. Even if I’m pissed at the bankers, I don’t want to cut off my nose to spite my face.

On the other hand I worry we’re rewarding bad behavior by allowing these big businesses to survive. No one can convincingly deny that.

I hear a lot of talk about keeping the credit markets open, but don’t we need the credit markets to be a little tighter? Wasn’t the whole sub-prime mess caused by too much credit being available to too many people?

If you can’t afford it, I don’t want governmental policy encouraging you to borrow. There’s something fundamentally wrong with loans that can only be made when usurious rates must be charged. Hey, Gary Coleman–I’m talking to you.

I don’t want the people who caused this to benefit. That especially goes for bankers. Do you think we consumers don’t understand you’re right up there with airlines in your contempt for us? For many people you have turned borrowing into the financial equivalent of heroin addiction.

Finally, there’s a hard sell on. I see it on the cable news networks especially. Any time the pressure’s on to make a quick move I begin to count my fingers and hide the silverware.

I really wish I knew. This is too big a decision to be rendered without me having an opinion.

Politics

Are you into politics much? We ran a poll on-the-air Tuesday and only 3% of our voting viewers said they were obsessed with politics. If I’m not in the 3%, I’m close.

Maybe it’s not so much I’m into politics as I watch a lot of news, especially the cable news networks. I see them when I get up and again when I come home.

Tonight I turned on MSNBC and came upon a post-Michigan primary roundtable hosted by Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. They were chatting it up with NBC’s political director and Andrea Mitchell.

At one point they all began to salivate. OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but they were excited. Leaving Michigan, no candidate has gotten an insurmountable lead. It’s possible one, or both, of the political conventions will be contested.

I’m not sure that’s happened in my lifetime, a convention convened without a candidate already anointed.

For the last few decades, political conventions have been stage managed and homogenized. In an open convention, political warfare would take place. It might be riveting. Think of it as a reality show.

It also might allow a fatally wounded (in the electable sense) candidate to be chosen.

This coming presidential election promises to be one of the most interesting in a very long time. The current national political tilting away from Republicans could be short lived if Democrats fight too much this summer Denver.

Chicago Fire Gets Little National Coverage

A fire broke out this evening in an older high rise office building in Chicago. At work we watched live feeds of the action. It was very compelling video with flames coming out the windows and people scurrying around not far from the danger (and as it turned out there were many injuries, including some injured firemen).

ABC and the other ‘legacy’ networks were in entertainment programming. This is not the type of story that would have ever caused them to break in. The same is not true for the cable news networks, so I flipped my tuner to Channel 31 and started at MSNBC.

They were in talk programming. I think it was Deborah Norville&#185. On Channel 32, Fox had Hannity and Colmes yapping away. Brooke Shields was with Larry King on CNN, Channel 33.

If any of them covered the fire, it was during headline breaks. I came looking because I wanted to see continuous coverage. I found no coverage.

I know these shows are repeated later in the evening and I assume breaking news makes it much more difficult to run them intact during West Coast prime time. Still, this was the bread and butter of cable news a few years ago.

I’ll bet if any one of them would have broken in, they all would have.

&#185 – I loved Deborah Norville when she was on the radio. She was really charming and quite witty. I’m not sure I’ve ever watched more than 10 consecutive seconds of any of her TV shows. Isn’t it strange how that works?