| Nov. 4th, 2008 @ 09:02 pm kidding me??? (a quick rant) |
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I SWEAR!
this is why i hate 24/7 news channels!
***just after flipping the channel to such a station*** guy at the desk: wow. so you can just see green? me thinking: ...uhh...the democrats are blue, the republicans are red. what the hell are you talking about??? guy standing in front of a green screen: yah. me thinking: idiot. guy at the desk: oh. so we can see it better than you can? all you see is the green screen... me thinking: oh. sorry. not idiots. sorry, sorry, sorry! green screen guy: *chuckles* me thinking: ...wait. is this just idle chatter...? guy at the desk: *keeps praising green screen guy* wow, you're so good knowing where to point and stuff. me thinking: ...oh, god, this is beyond idiotic. where's your focus, people?!
(and then they were done with green screen guy, and the desk guy must have been surprised or caught off guard.)
guy at the desk: oh...sooooo where were we? me thinking: why do i even bother? ***
now i know that 24/7 news channels must have...some sort of purpose :-P but personally, i think they can do more harm than good. there ISN'T enough news to fill up 24 hours of television, 7 days a week. there really isn't.
stations will try to get quite intelligent analysts to speak on a topic. and for trying to share well-informed opinions with the public, i commend the news stations. but to fill up time, these smart, educated thinkers will start rambling and talking nonsense. there's only a certain amount of time a people can talk before they can't think of anything else to say.
generally, that's what happens with news stories. they become overanalyzed, overly discussed. small things turn into big deals just because the news channels have to fill up more time. (the opposite happens as well. when there are a lot of major stories happening in the same time period, the news show producers have to prioritize and pick which one will get covered more. then the other ones will get less air time than they usually would had there not been this other *bigger* thing happening at the same time.)
and the public can react in two ways. #1 they can get sick and tired of hearing the same old news again and again. important phrases that would have made great newspaper headlines more than half a century ago become so cliche. and the stories just get old and forgotten. they'd be more interested in what's for dinner tonight than spend ANOTHER day talking about the stock market or the state of our economy...when they really should be more affected by it.
or #2. the public can get so obsessed with following updates on a trivial news story that they forget everything else. or they let this news story affect their everyday lives. that's what happened with all the kidnappings in the last few decades. (thank goodness, we don't hear as many as we used to before!) parents don't let their kids go outside of the house because they're so afraid of kidnappings. if they paid more attention to the statistics and less time having their eyes glued to the news on tv, they'd see that the number of kidnappings have been going down. back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, children were in greater danger than they are now. but they didn't report that. parents didn't hear about it on the news. why? because there were no 24/7 news channels!
the 24/7 news channels have created a society made up of paranoid, delusional, ill-informed people who hang on reporters' words with either too much criticism or not enough.
here, i say "less is more." these stations have their time and place. but i don't think that their time should be 24 hours, 7 days a week...unless a certain news story calls for constant coverage. (but i'll only allow that once a month.) and at that time, what we need are coherent news reporters to hold our attention with real, reliable facts and strong, supported opinions.
only THEN will i really appreciate the purpose of 24/7 news channels. ***
(wow, it feels good getting back to unrestrained ranting. but i should be getting back to my homework now XP...and more power to you if you got through all of that!! i really only planned on writing the stupid conversation up at the top i had with the tv. ok, thanks.)
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