“Opinion TV” Confused with “The News”
Is it just me, or has the 99.9% of what’s on cable news channels become pure opinion. Almost every time I tune to what is supposed to be the news, I see some supposed expert speculating on what might happen in the future. I don’t care about what so and so thinks is going to happen, I want to know what is happening, and how it relates to the world as a whole. I’ll form my own opinions based on that.
Beyond my personal preferences, it is a tragedy that viewers often confuse all these opinions with fact and inexcusable that so many “journalists” are unaware there’s even a difference. Attempts to psychically see the future, in order to be the “first” to report the “news”, has become far too “acceptable” a practice these days. The best “news source” is apparently the one that can correctly intuit what’s going to happen before their competitors do. Hold on, I think I’m having a vision!
Now don’t get me wrong, lively intelligent debate is essential to the health of our society. But it shouldn’t be confused with news, which should be as close to fact as we can possibly manage. Debate and commentary (to inspire debate) on a network that is supposed to be all about news is an attempt to sell opinion as fact. Ethically, opinion should be on other networks, not labeled as “news networks”, where fact and opinion aren’t so easily confused. You know, like Comedy Central.
How is spewing out one’s personal intuitions, which may or may not turn out to be true, good journalism? I mean I’m perfectly capable of making guesses myself, thank you – I have a brain of my own. Opinion and fact are two different things — subjective and objective, and I think I remember something from my childhood about the news supposedly being objective. Don’t they still try to sell it that way? “Who’s the most objective news source? We are.” And if you’re selling it as objective (factual), shouldn’t it mostly be facts?
Of course there are journalists who try to get actual news stories on the air. Every once in a while you’ll hear one interviewed talking about how hard he or she worked on a story about something truly important, and then their producer wouldn’t air it — apparently because they had some really urgent psychic predictions and personal feelings to air instead.
It’s not like there’s a lack of news for the “news” networks to report on. Afghanistan and Africa are sorely underreported on, and I am sure there are other extremely important issues I know nothing about because no one is covering them. The news channels don’t need to have all this “filler”, and if a day ever did occur that there was truly nothing happening anywhere in the world that anyone might care about, I’d rather they show something that couldn’t possibly be confused with news – like music videos, cartoons, hell even a blue screen with the words “nothing happing right now” would be more ethical. Couldn’t they just show the weather and stock market reports if there’s really nothing happening? At least then I wouldn’t waste my time sifting through the news on the off chance they might show some actual news.
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