Re: Do you read local newspapers or watch local news?
Televised news in the US is basically unwatchable.... just one depressing [censored] story after another, with random useless human interest pieces thrown in for the "feel good" types.
Local news is filled with all the completely non-story types of news about local murders, fires, and local scandals.
National news is completely skewed towards one political agenda or another, and spends as much time on Hollywood gossip "news" as it does about anything else. The rest is political garbage and squawking about Iraq. Completely uninteresting.
Print media isn't any better, as they'll always manage to fill 99% of their paper with whatever was on the local news last night.
Almost 100% of my news input comes from CNN.com or listening to world news programs on public radio. BBC does a better job with US news than anything in the US. At least it's not skewed one way or another, they just present the facts.
Watching my local news on television is basically just watching a horribly unfunny version of Ron Burgundy. If they're not talking about cat fashion shows or bears at the zoo, they're just making a huge story out of some random crime.
I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but the "culture of fear" is very real in the US, where the media bombards us with messages about how unsafe we all are, how badly we're all being screwed over, and what we need to do to "protect ourselves"... it's quite pathetic really, to see how easily people get worked up about things that don't really matter, and to see the "cliffhanger" commercials for the local news about "Finding out what you're feeding your children that could be KILLING them!!" where it's painfully obvious that they're more interested in keeping their ratings up than they are about actually providing you with the information you "need".
And if I have to watch one more weatherman pretend like his job is the most important job on the planet because he's warning us about the "dangerous" weather that could impact our safety today, I'll stab myself in the face with a rusty shovel.
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