"The News"

What's the news? Conjecture

I have given up watching the news on the cable channels. I had already removed Fox News because I detest everything they stand for, but left CNN, Headline, MSNBC and others. Then last week after listening, (not watching ) Headline News for 30 minutes to their take on the OctoMom and her plight, I realized that all I listen to and watch is someone's opinion, and conjecture. 30 minutes of air time that could have been used to report the news, not offering opinions was wasted on something I didn't give a damn about.

The news media in the past 15 to 20 years has trained us poor saps who watch them in hope of learning what is going on in our world, to conjecture. While discussing a news item with my family members the other day, it dawned on me that what we were doing was what the pundits do every time they do the “news”. We were conjecturing about what really went on concerning this news story. We were mimicking the pundits, like we have been trained.

Of course, all the information we had to go on about the story we were discussing was learned through the opinions of the ones who report their version of the news to us on television. Innuendo, supposition, guesses and outright lies are spouted every day, every hour, every minute on the shows where they tear apart people's lives, motives and actions in the name of “the news.” Sensationalism has taken the place of objective news reporting, that and making money. If you just reported what you knew as fact about a story, people who have been trained to survive on your conjectures, and sensationalism, wouldn't watch you. They have been trained too well.

I have begun reading the news on the net. Of course, you have to be careful about where the new source came from, but I don't have to watch an over processed bubble head giving their or their producers slant on the story, when all I want is the story.