Posted on 02/04/2010 10:41:38 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
On Wednesday, President Obama had something of a Howard Beale moment. Speaking to a group of Democratic senators, the President exhorted his listeners -- and, by extension, all Americans -- to break the cable news habit.
"If everybody here turned off your CNN, your Fox, just turn off the TV, MSNBC, blogs, and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics," Obama said, things would be an awful lot better in Washington.
His appeal threatened to alienate some of his loyal supporters in the media -- MSNBC actually cut away from his remarks shortly after, with a nervous joke -- but it was dead on target.
How Cable Stole Our Brains
I've been covering the media business for a decade. Setting aside the Internet -- a big thing to set aside, I know, but hang with me for a minute -- the two biggest developments over that time have been the decline of newspapers and the growth of cable news. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Americans have been steadily getting more of their news from cable and ever less of it from papers. It doesn't take a genius to see the connection.
It used to be that cable-news viewers faced a simple choice: CNN, if you wanted your news straightforward and boring; Fox News, if you wanted to watch middle-aged white men shouting. Then MSNBC discovered its niche as the left-wing equivalent of Fox, and Headline News became HLN and started rivaling sister network CNN in the ratings.
The proliferation of options has brought with it an explosion of arguments and value judgments. Is MSNBC as far to the left as Fox is to the right? Is Fox's straight-news reporting affected by its opinion programming? Does the fact that Fox is now the most trusted cable-news network mean what it seems to? Does the fact that CNN's audience is heavily Democratic belie its claim to be nonpartisan?
Why None of It Matters
The answer to all these questions is: It doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter whether Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann is the bigger blowhard, or whether Shepard Smith is less biased than Wolf Blitzer. The fact is, if you're getting your news from cable, you're getting misinformed. You're being told things are important that aren't. You're getting a diet of stories selected primarily for their strong visuals and sensationalistic details, not for their news value. You're watching a lot of split-screen shots of people talking over each other so loudly that none can be understood.
In short: If you watch a great deal of cable news, you are making yourself stupider. Put down the remote control. Pick up a newspaper. You may not have that luxury much longer.
Arnold Ziffel is smarter than this asshat.
LOL.
Guess the Obamination and his sycophant media whores are not too pleased with facts and an informed electorate these days.
Imagine if Bush told people to stop watching the news?
Actually, Dick Morris called it.
The only substantial number of people watching cable news are watching Fox, which is opening people’s eyes to his total ineptitude. So he tells people to stop watching cable. He only threw MSNBC and such in there to seem to not appear biased, and besides, no one watches them anyway.
It’s just more of the war on Fox.
It seems like an almost purposeful insult to the most politically engaged group of people out here. I hope the Obamanator keeps it up! Like the Mama's and Papa's sang:
"You're Gonna Trip, Stumble and Fall."
Nothing personal, but FR can’t show Getty Images.
Yeah...isn’t it amazing, when the libs and demonrats owned all of the broadcast media and the rest of the lamestream media, we were told (dictated to), how they were the voices of reason and the common man.
But now, that more and more people are waking up and seeing them as they are, nothing more then a nazi style propaganda arm of the DNC, Now..now we are told to “turn off our TV’s”.
Just like the hatred that spewed from the left and the insidious clinton years, when “triangulation” ruled, and the clinton’s attack machines were unleashed...Now we are all asked “can’t we all just get along”.
When the left and demonrats do the attacking, it’s for our own good...but when the rest of the world starts to question dear leader...then it’s, “turn off the TV and lets have a group hug”.
What pathetic losers.
Obama is soooo 3rd worldish with everything he tries.
I just took a good read of the article.
Libs have no one to blame but themselves for the sensationalistic nature of news nowadays.
It’s all Big Bird’s fault. You heard me, Big Bird.
When I was little I watched Romper Room. I watched Captain Kangaroo. And God forbid, Mr Rogers. They were slow but sweet, with real conversations and things to pay attention to.
Then a show started on PBS, called Sesame Street. It had violent images and colors, and flashing cartoons. When I first watched it with my mom, she said, “This is so bad for kids. They are teaching children that everything has to be entertaining and they don’t have to work at or be patient for content.”
Now the Sesame Street generation has grown up and it has the attention span of a gnat. Welcome to modern news.
I didn’t know. How would I know it is a getty image? I got it from Financial Times.
It says Getty Images on it
Ya, that'll help...
Oh, geez. Right at the bottom. I don’t have the best eyes, I missed it.
Wow. If you are making yourself stupider by watching cable news, just think of where MSNBC afficionados will eventually end up.
They don’t start out too high on the scale to begin with.
Right ZERO. People should listen to Obama State Sponsored ABC, See-BS and NBC to get your Orwellian Truth serum.
This guy sounds more and more like a clueless fascist jerk every time he opens his mouth.
For crying out loud! The average FReeper or FR lurker is 100 times more informed than this flap-eared pretender. He couldn’t debate any of us.
Very true. Unless he had a teleprompter and “Plugs” next to him for gaff advice.!
A lot of us are smarter than TOTUS too.
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