So, something that has been stewing in my mind for a while is a really angry tirade on how 24 hour news channels are fucking terrible, what with them creating tons bullshit to fill in all 24 hours. I tried to formulate some form of coherent rant but it quickly became more and more depressing as I realized something: real journalism (at least in the mainstream) is dead.
This sounds hyperbolic, and it kind of is, but not as much as you would hope. 24 hours is a lot of time to fill and since they don't have any way to gain funds other than by being funded by ad revenue and website traffic they have to make sure that they scrape as many views to them as possible. They do this by trying to bring people news faster than competitors such as the internet (good fucking luck there) and by trying to be entertaining/flashy enough to keep people there.
Trying to get news to people fast is what the internet was made for. In an attempt to get news out quick they get information they receive on the air ASAP which is often not fact checked. Remember the Boston Marathon bombing? Fox and CNN jumped on the story and all claimed that an arrest had been made before the actual police had made any movement towards suspects. The FBI actually scolded them for making this error because it could have caused problems. I am not trying to say that the news shouldn't try to get information to people quickly, but at least fact check it. Someone tells you that they are a policeman? Fucking check it. It doesn't take long. You are supposed to be journalists: people who try to get the truth of situations out to people. Being fast is great but when you sacrifice accuracy for that speed, you lose the core of your identity.
Being flashy does fuck all for information. In short this is news agencies trying to get people to watch all of their shit to justify ad companies to add to their unfortunately small revenue. To do this they try to get exclusives, but that only goes so far. A lot of news agencies have started to make small stories into big stories. Seriously, why else would Justin Beiber's arrest be newsworthy. Its not news, its tabloid fodder. You are supposed to be better than that news channels.
On this same note talking about violence constantly and trying to show the world falling into disrepair and how it is on the road to a mad max style society because no one has any morals anymore is bullshit. We are living in the most peaceful time in society yet. I feel like I need to say that I am not trying to say the wars going on around the world are not big or important, they are, but it should be a journalists responsibility to put that war into context. By the way, this also has a massively bad effect on people's psyche. Spending an entire 24 hours analyzing a shooting also desensitizes people to the problem and can create worse moods for people in general while exacerbating or causing depression in people who are prone to the problem.
I am not saying that we should only talk about puppies and sunshine, that would be stupid. I don't think that you should do any more than reporting the news and putting the news into context. This doesn't fill up 24 hour news networks programming? Then maybe 24 hour news is a bad way of doing things. People are watching television less and less, maybe just make a news website that creates good news reports.
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