The results of my "television diet"...

[alexpgp]

When the kids moved downstairs, they took their satellite dish and television with them. That left Galina and me with a puny little portable, with no antenna.

This basically means we get one Albuquerque station's signal well; two more stations, so-so. In effect, we (or at least I) went on a "TV diet."

I mean, who wants to watch reruns of The X Files?

The other evening, I joined Galina for a night of TV, and I must say: After being away for so long, the content seems even worse than before.

News coverage is the pits. Sure, there's a lot of violence in the world, but it seems to be the only thing the newsies are interested in. I mean, okay, there was a story - just one - along the lines of a Rotary Club in Albuquerque honoring a woman who had spent 18 years with troubled kids, but as for the rest... nothing but murder, rape, suicide, fire.

And they spice it up by trying as best as possible to cover the event "live," often trying to beat the cops to the scene. Yowzah!

The video newsmagazines seem to be following suit. Whatever abomination Dan Rather hosts on CBS appears to have devoted a series of broadcasts devoted to murder. (I caught the tail end of something about a bank robber named "Hollywood.") Sure, it probably ratchets up the ratings, but then why persist in pretending that it's journalism?

What, in the final analysis, is the difference between modern journalists - who love to occasionally trot out the ghost of Edward R. Murrow as they carry on about integrity and truth - and the scribes who penned the lurid "true detective" yarns of the 50s and 60s?

Yeah, I know, newsies have been chasing stories along these lines for ages (e.g., Weegee and my old man, who edited True Detective for Dell for a while), but when you consider the "conventional wisdom" about how important it is to read/watch the news in order to be a better-informed citizen, I wonder what is so important about convenience store stick-ups?

Then again, considering some of the strongly biased political reporting in the media, maybe exposure to a steady stream of crime-related stories isn't so bad.

Just musing... I'll put the soapbox back, now.

Cheers...

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

I figure that if I want to find out the actual story behind something, I have to watch all the network news (of which I only get two) and read the Wall Street Journal, figuring that their individual biases will more or less cancel out ;)

As far as Dan Rather goes, a quote from a recent interview with him says it all:

"I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things."
-- Dan Rather

[days-unfolding.livejournal.com]

That's why I read the newspaper....It's a smidge more well-balanced. The internet is even better. I love reading the online versions of some British papers (and the BBC) to get a completely different slant on things.