Thoughts about Nightly News
4/06/2005
If you haven't already heard, all three of our major news anchors, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and now Peter Jennings, are going away (the latter may or may not be a permanent change).
I don't know about you, but it seems odd that they would all simply get up and walk away at the same time (relatively speaking). I am being tempted to don a tinfoil hat in my oversimplification of the facts, though I must state that I am aware of the distinctly different 'reasons' for each of them to remove themselves from our TV screens. Nevertheless, it reeks of something under the surface. Or perhaps the are simply sick and tired of reporting in a gone world.
I know I would be, but I simply haven't anything else to do with all this thinking.
In this very same USA Today story as linked above, former NBC President Reuben Frank is quoted thus:
"In television, almost every day is the end of an era," former NBC News president Reuven Frank says. "Even as cable news is supposedly taking over from network news, blogger news is preparing to take over from cable news. How long will the average American be content to slog through the blogs for his news, and when will he go back to news that someone has figured out is more important, or more interesting, than other news? Sooner or later, somebody is going to ask, 'What the heck is going on?' "The answer is simple. When people 'slog through the blogs,' they are looking for the real deal, not the edited highlights and single-mindedness of cable and network news. With so many online papers and blogs at our disposal, we don't need to trust the jaded opinions of reporters spouting off for Rupert Murdoch. We don't have to rely solely on the right-wing agenda peddled through Faux News and its ilk. 'Slogging' is the only way we are able to get a healthy cross-section of what's really going on.
We've already asked "What the heck is going on?" Why go back to the networks that we can no longer trust to provide 'fair and balanced' journalism? Why pander to the corporate media machine that tells us only what it wants us to hear? Sure it's a sad day that the BIG 3 are fading into the sunset. But it's an even sadder day when the truth has been so well hidden from many unsuspecting, duped souls across this nation that still have faith in nightly news highlights.
I used to watch the news. But they left out too many details, and they didn't report the important news anymore. When OJ and MJ and crap like that takes center stage, yet stories like Gannongate and Iraqi body counts and important things get shoved into the closet, it's time to take off the gloves and fill the gap left by the lying elite. Many blogs do that, and it's the reason we read them.
Now 'they' want to control and regulate the blogs. Much like the MPAA and the RIAA want to control and eliminate their competition, p2p software. It's about control. Eliminating the free people's outlets, bottlenecking the age of information and relegating our very culture to one or two major sources controlled by corporations and politicians. It's not just about money. It's about power. It's about homogenization. It's about ego and death.
So farewell big 3. You are the last of a dying age of oversimplified news stories and media personalities. I'm sure you will be replaced by an onslaught of angry, conservative 'reporters' or right-leaning centrists with pretty faces. And dumbed-down America will continue to be spoonfed while another world goes on around them undiscovered.
posted by Edward Svengali @ Wednesday, April 06, 2005,
