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Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
I agree with the first part of this sentence. The last part not so much. At best, people are better informed about what happened in the last few hours.
I'm not one to use FoxNews as a cuss word. I think a person could be reasonably well-informed getting their news from the FoxNews Calibre feed, even though there are better choices. But as for the FoxNews channel:
Overall, Fox News dominated the ratings as usual. The network claimed the top 13 programs in total viewers.
A lot of those programs are not news, but opinion. In as much as people switched from high circulation afternoon newspaper newspapers like the late Washington Star and Philadelphia Bulletin to straight TV news and then to opinion TV news, I suspect the trend is less to being better informed and more to having greater certainty that one is well-enough informed to have firm opinions.
Would anyone fifty years ago say, with a straight face, that they get their news from a comedian?
eReaders could be part of the solution. The Calibre news feeds are a stupendous resource putting in my hand a deeper and wider range of national and world news than I ever got from that Philadelphia Bulletin. However, I don't get the idea that eReaders are being much used in that way. |
Nice post. Opinion ain't news and I think too many of us Yanks have forgotten that. But the trend in Europe (well, Belgium anyway) is moving the same way. Hard News is boring but informative, Opinion News is conflict and taps into anger. One makes money the other doesn't. I find it ironic, as an American, that state-sponsored news has become more accurate and balanced than the corporate news.