Large News Sucks

Posted by Bellznwhistle

I was reading cnn.com this morning and I started thinking about how it was all bullshit news. I don’t care about rare acts of violence that, while shocking, will never happen to me. Most of the violence is choreographed violence anyway. Demonstrators throwing rocks at a wall of police who disperse the crowd through tear gas or clubbing. Where are the pictures of someone struggling to breath as three people stomp on them and shatter bones and teeth? We hear about the horrors of Africa, but no one even bothers to take pictures of how terrible some areas have become there. We are so desensitized to the violence that it really doesn’t matter to us. Much like when we talk about money wasted in terms of billions and trillions lost and owed. Those sums are so large that I have no frame of reference. They are so big, that they have become nothing to me. It’s so ridiculous to talk about trillions of dollars owed because it is so much that it in effect becomes nothing. It isn’t even real money. Its all talking points and theory. There is no way to pay that back/off. If we can’t even crack a dent in the exponential interest, then who really cares or worries about paying it back. It will have to be erased/forgiven, or so other way of repayment will be necessary.

Getting back to the low level of substance in news, I don’t want to know anything about pseudo-celebrity reality stars or movie stars, for that matter. I want to be informed, but reading the newspaper is still more filler, just on a local level. The major news outlets on the right and the left provide the reader with quick sound bites and not much substance. I want to know why. Who decided that the average person needed meaningless events broken down to their most basic concepts? There are even a few quick bullet points at the top of most articles now so you don’t even have to read them! Why bother with the article if those are the only things worth taking from them?

What is the purpose of news? What are some of the things that people think all informed citizens should know? Who says citizens should be informed? Does all this content serve just to give people something to talk about with each other? Just something else besides the weather to talk about? Tell me what you think.