Posted on 02/04/2010 10:41:38 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
On Wednesday, President Obama had something of a Howard Beale moment. Speaking to a group of Democratic senators, the President exhorted his listeners -- and, by extension, all Americans -- to break the cable news habit.
"If everybody here turned off your CNN, your Fox, just turn off the TV, MSNBC, blogs, and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics," Obama said, things would be an awful lot better in Washington.
His appeal threatened to alienate some of his loyal supporters in the media -- MSNBC actually cut away from his remarks shortly after, with a nervous joke -- but it was dead on target.
How Cable Stole Our Brains
I've been covering the media business for a decade. Setting aside the Internet -- a big thing to set aside, I know, but hang with me for a minute -- the two biggest developments over that time have been the decline of newspapers and the growth of cable news. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Americans have been steadily getting more of their news from cable and ever less of it from papers. It doesn't take a genius to see the connection.
It used to be that cable-news viewers faced a simple choice: CNN, if you wanted your news straightforward and boring; Fox News, if you wanted to watch middle-aged white men shouting. Then MSNBC discovered its niche as the left-wing equivalent of Fox, and Headline News became HLN and started rivaling sister network CNN in the ratings.
The proliferation of options has brought with it an explosion of arguments and value judgments. Is MSNBC as far to the left as Fox is to the right? Is Fox's straight-news reporting affected by its opinion programming? Does the fact that Fox is now the most trusted cable-news network mean what it seems to? Does the fact that CNN's audience is heavily Democratic belie its claim to be nonpartisan?
Why None of It Matters
The answer to all these questions is: It doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter whether Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann is the bigger blowhard, or whether Shepard Smith is less biased than Wolf Blitzer. The fact is, if you're getting your news from cable, you're getting misinformed. You're being told things are important that aren't. You're getting a diet of stories selected primarily for their strong visuals and sensationalistic details, not for their news value. You're watching a lot of split-screen shots of people talking over each other so loudly that none can be understood.
In short: If you watch a great deal of cable news, you are making yourself stupider. Put down the remote control. Pick up a newspaper. You may not have that luxury much longer.
You are so right.
I just thought of another ‘New Headline’ btw:
New Headline:
Stop watching Cable News or we’ll shut if down for you.
“Green Acres.”
Yeah, but that isn’t just like Bush saying nu-ku-lar instead of nuclear. /s
The point is, when a Republican or conservative screws up, its FRONT PAGE NEWS like nobody EVER DID IT BEFORE.
AND, since OBAMA is SUPPOSED to be the “smartest President” ever, I guess its less excusable in HIM, no?
He's a lying, phony bastard and deserves all the ridicule we can give him. He is a fraud and an impostor.
I spent most of the past two years writing the Mixed Media blog on Portfolio.com, the website of Condé Nast Portfolio magazine, which shut down in April. Before Portfolio, I covered media, entertainment and politics for the pop culture magazine Radar (another victim, sadly, of the great magazine recession). And before that I reported on media and advertising for the trade newspaper WWD, where I wrote a daily column, "Memo Pad."Jeff, in a decade you'll be a middle aged white man. And some young jerktwerp such as you are now might be cutting you down just for that.
It's ironic -- future shouting middle-aged white man Jeff is today preaching on behalf of the crazy senile mainstream media.
Obama’s message was to “Stop listening to anyone but me”.
This asshat thinks that’s a good idea.
Dumb fark!
People are watching cable new with a laptop on their lap or adjacent to a desktop. They run-out, surf, look at the news print ineptitude and bias. News print is getting discredited with lightning speed. If a good percentage of page hits to a news print article coincide in a timely fashion with a cable news story => the gigs up.
Jeff Bercovici is listed as a Media Communist
...sorry I meant to type “Media Columnist” for ‘Daily Finance’
Question: If the “media columnist” says in essence, none of it matters...wouldn’t that put him at the top of the layoff list?
Dick went on to say that there was more to it. Why does he have to be so thin skinned? He can’t stand any criticism. He just wants us all to bury our heads in the sand and let him do his work.
Yep! It would be so much better to limit myself to that one daily paper laying on the lawn each morning. One point of view to digest and only on the subjects they like to write about! How simple!
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