Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I had a discussion with someone the other day and we both agreed that 24-hour news channels have probably done more harm than good in the grand scheme of things. If these channels were reporting actual news with no slant, bias, or opinion mixed in, I think they wouldn't be able to broadcast more than a couple hours per day. When you add in political opinion shows, I think people tend to confuse opinion and fact or they just become the head-nodding agreement crowd.
Just looking at the P&OC forum here is a great example of how bad political discussions can get. No doubt there are far worse discussions had on this big, bad interwebs.
Do you think the 24-hour news channel has done more harm than good? I don't care to address specific leanings or biases. I feel like any topic is beat to death and then beat some more, and then opinion and emotion are mixed in and we wind up with simple discussions degrading to the equivalent of monkeys flinging poo.
I was just thinking about this other day, when CNN first appeared you could turn it on any time of the day and watch news. If you watched for half an hour you'd get the latest. After an hour you'd start getting repeats of previous news stories. Then they started adding commentary shows.... They spun off HLN for the 24 hour news cycle and today even that doesn't have news 24/7.
This is more about economics, it's saturated market and when combined with competition from the internet they have to make money on something other than news.
Even the news itself is more about entertainment, there was a documentary about Peter Jennings and the one commentator mentioned he absolutely despised having to cover things like the Michael Jackson story instead of more important things. This is what people want so that's what we get. I use to like watching Koppel on Nightline, caught some of it the other night and it might as well have been Entertainment Tonight.
I don't think it's just the plethora of political shows that are an issue, it's journalism as a whole that is dead.
Catching up on the latest news doesn't take up a large amount of time for those who live fulfilling lives. For people who have no life, I suppose I would rather they watch CNN all day than reruns of sitcoms.
I had a discussion with someone the other day and we both agreed that 24-hour news channels have probably done more harm than good in the grand scheme of things. If these channels were reporting actual news with no slant, bias, or opinion mixed in, I think they wouldn't be able to broadcast more than a couple hours per day. When you add in political opinion shows, I think people tend to confuse opinion and fact or they just become the head-nodding agreement crowd.
Just looking at the P&OC forum here is a great example of how bad political discussions can get. No doubt there are far worse discussions had on this big, bad interwebs.
Do you think the 24-hour news channel has done more harm than good? I don't care to address specific leanings or biases. I feel like any topic is beat to death and then beat some more, and then opinion and emotion are mixed in and we wind up with simple discussions degrading to the equivalent of monkeys flinging poo.
What they're showing you isnt "unfiltered" stuff, but they try and slant it as such. In other words, instead of showing you a fireman saving a cat from a tree, they'll talk about someone who did something bad and polarizing....because after all, polarizing news gets you to tune in and stay tuned in and it gets them to sell more advertising to you. Remember that tv shows are on for one purpose...to get you to watch the commercials that they air during the show.
Also, the "news" has no doubt killed many people over the years by copycat crimes, people see that so and so made the news for hacking up his family, it gets into the brains of the weak minded and its monkey see and monkey do. If the news never showed any of this stuff, there would be less copycat crimes.
Lastly, if you want to know the "news" go over to your window and look outside. THATS the news. THAT is what's going on in the world. Unless you see something bad happen outside your window, i'm pretty sure all will be right with the world when you look outside. You will hear birds chirping, the sun will he shining (hopefully) and there will be no hate, no racism, no crime no nothing......looking out your window is as unfiltered as it gets....next time you want to "check the news" open up the window and look outside.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
