For years it has been a joke that news in the United States is terrible: obsessed with trivia and celebrity; fronted by Botox bimbos; forever interviewing citizens about some artifact of small-town life when a major news story is breaking elsewhere.
Well, the truth is that it's far, far worse than that. After an hour of flipping between channels during lunchtime prior to the election, this was the sum total of information gleaned: there are two US presidential candidates; they have produced campaign ads; people have made video parodies and posted them on the internet; a US TV news host appeared on a US TV chatshow last night; and someone said something controversial (read ignorant) on a different TV show the day before.
In the meantime, a sought-after war criminal may have been arrested and sent for trial; several new scientific breakthroughs announced; Zimbabwe edged carefully toward shared government; the Indian government dealt with votes of no-confidence and terrorist attacks; and countless other real stories came and went.
It's not the absolute dearth of real news that is the problem. It's the fact that the news that is presented isn't news but mindless, misleading gossip.
[Excerpt of an article by Kieren McCarthy,The Guardian]
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