I rarely watch CNN or Fox News because they don’t just
report the news; they bore you to death with it. When the latest Malaysian
Airline’s plane went down, CNN had sunrise to sunset coverage of it. They
paraded us through an unending list of retired pilots, air traffic controllers,
and anyone else who has had anything even remotely to do with airline travel,
all with their expert opinions on why the plane went down. Often there are
conflicting testimonies, and that adds even more to the drama, as now we have
on-air arguments between the so-called experts. Shades of Jerry Springer. They
will bring back stories of airline disasters—some that go back to the time of
Emilia Earhart—for examples to talk about. They will show us maps of the ocean
floor, and bring in weather experts to talk about wind shear and updrafts. All
of this just makes us more confused than ever.
They like to show pictures of the grieving families of the
victims, asking them all kinds of questions about how they are dealing with
this, and what could the airlines have done different, and if they are planning
on suing anyone. They bring on the traveler that missed the plane, because he
overslept, to talk about karma. They want to know if people think President
Obama is insensitive since he never made a trip over to support them; and if
four battleships sent from the United States, at a quarter of a million dollars
a day, are enough to show sincerity in the ongoing search. They will bring on
forensic experts to talk about bodies decomposing, and if people suffer much in
a plane crash. Then, one day they find the black boxes and they tell us it will
take two years before they will know what happened. By that time, we will have
forgotten about it and will be intrigued by a new disaster. Yeah, you’ve got to
love the newsies.
Political campaigns are always a hoot if you bounce back and
forth between the two stations. One is the Republican’s poster boy, and the
other is about as liberal as you can get. Me, being in the middle, I’m not sure
which way to lean. I know now that Halliburton is not trickling down any of its
money to me, and I also know that we’re about one more government program short
of busting the bank. I had the following example shared with me a while back.
Let’s say you have an adult child who has twenty thousand dollars in credit
card debt. Each month they pay only the interest and add a few more hundred
dollars on the principal. What’s your advice for them? Go on charging? Or maybe
try to get your fiscal house in order? To be fair, both parties spend way too
much money they don’t have, and someday the chickens are going to come home to
roost. Is it going to affect me? Probably not, because I’m old, but I have
three kids and eight grandkids that it will affect. I feel bad because they
didn’t make the decision to spend all this money and not pay the bills.
PBS seems to have good news coverage. You won’t find any
babes there in short skirts, or pulpit beaters preaching hate messages—just the
news—straightforward. They don’t find any reason to embellish it one way or the
other. Or, if you want, you can do what more and more people are doing by just
not watching it, and letting the news come to them. I think that’s going to be
my choice.
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