The Idiocy of American News Media

I find myself agreeing with this point (almost reluctantly) about the fiasco surrounding the BP Chairman's comments & how American media too often diverts attention to the wrong issues, wasting precious time that could be spent educating/informing the public on much more important facts and events. Just to be clear though, I basically hate BP & companies like it and am not a fan of the practices of greedy corporations. (anyone who has read this blog for more than 6 months should know how I view corporations). So i'm not defending them one bit.

But this comes at a time when the mainstream news media (more & more a venue for info-tainment) already spends too much time on nonsensical non-news stories on the level of cats stuck in trees. (this is national news i'm referring to..even in times of crisis/turmoil). I have contacted news agencies on a few occasions over the years to get them to cover real news... only to be told that they weren't interested. This is one reason why I lost respect for mainstream news (or for what imitates news & journalism these days) and decided to start blogging.

This is why Americans are clueless about oil spills in Nigeria, war & genocide in Sudan and Congo (several orders of magnitude worse than in Kosovo...for which Bill Clinton was willing to start WWIII), the ongoing Cold War in Central Asia and the Caucusus, life for troops in Iraq & Afghanistan, modern day slavery, the American health care system and American Democracy as compared to other nations, the time leading up to the financial crisis and how Bernie Madoff Made-off w/ so much money, Americas upcoming day of reckoning regarding its ballooning debt (what could be coming will make 2008-09 appear minor), the shady oil & mining industries, the lack of labor protections/labor regulations to protect workers, etc, etc.

As far as the news business is concerned, I wish we could go back to the days of Ed Bradley, Walter Cronkite & Bernard Shaw. Unfortunately, a lot of the really good journalists who are still left have had to go online and/or independent, and can't reach a wide audience. It just seems that with the Fox News Faux News model leading the way, we are stuck in a race to the bottom in terms of news coverage... and we have a less informed/educated populace as a consequence.