I have been consistently frustrated with the availability of information to the average American citizen by the many sources of media and the partisan nature of reporting in this country today. I have wanted to discuss this issue at length for some time, and from time to time I offer my sound bites and opinions while sharing a beer with a friend or over a cup of coffee. There are several forms of media that we consume: TV, Printed Media, Radio and Online Content. I would like to begin this dialogue by tackling the televised segment of our media consumption. In the future I will continue to tackle the others as well. Surely this is a time altered opinion, and hopefully something that I will be able to speak about these and many other political topics at length in the future.
Every single day I sit at my desk speaking with clients of "The Firm" about the state of the economy, the state of the market and the vast array of information (CRAP) on TV which calls itself news. Whether you watch your local evening news, or if you focus on Nationally syndicated broadcast news on any of the major networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, FOXnews) its all a bunch of crap. If it bleeds, it leads...it’s that simple. Each of these networks is in business to increase their market share and make more money. They do this through creative marketing, focusing on the negative stories in the news and engage in a constant game of one upsmanship.
If you really want news...real news. There are several sources available. In my opinion you can learn more in the several hours of the Sunday Morning Washington talk show circuit than you can in a week of CNN, MSNBC, FOXnews ect. Now while I love to watch Rachel Maddow or Chris Matthews carry forward the policies and thought processes that I agree with, in the same breath Sean Hannity & Bill O'Reilly do the same to further the conservative (Neo-Conservative) agenda. While it is certainly entertaining there is little to be gained other than some simple sound bites and concise criticisms of any alternate agenda. If you want to dig beneath it all you need some source of balance in your political diet, some way of reaching beyond the punditry professed by the majority of "News" networks you need to dig deeper.
On a daily basis there is a great deal of actual news available on PBS on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. PBS is a not for profit institution funded by the American tax payer. Wow! What a thought! Bipartisan tax monies offered to a not for profit agency to provide non-partisan/bi-partisan news to the public. Additionally Frontline offers a weekly documentarian insight to what is going on in the world around us, it provides a uniquely in-depth insight with interviews and concise information concerning what is going on in the world...again....in a non-partisan way.
Each an every Friday night I begin my weekend with Washington Week with Gwen Eiffel on PBS as she wraps up the week in sound bites and new clips paired with particular points of view offered by other news editors and news columnists in many of the major publications in the world. Sunday is like Christmas to me. Face the Nation, Meet the Press, This Week and Fox News Sunday. These shows provide a great deal of insight into the political psyche of our county on a weekly basis. Surely each network has a particular focus and agenda that they intend to get across to the American people, however if you watch even one of these shows you will gain an insight into the specifics in a way that no network news show intends to provide on a nightly basis.
If you waste you time aligning your exposure to the media which is most in line with your political stream off consciousness you will never be capable of furthering your political scream of consciousness. If you are a raging conservative and watch only Fox News.....you will never understand the thought process of Democrats/Liberals. Like wise if you are a raging liberal and choose to only watch MSNBC you will never be able to understand the Republican/Conservative thought process. Yet by absorbing several sources of media, several perspectives on one political topic you may be able to further your ability to understand the problem more thoroughly and address is more succinctly.
So there you go. There are some great media offerings out there that are far more informative than the forms of media that we seem to ingest daily. Crap in.....crap out. It’s a simple formula.
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