Nothing new there. I wouldn't need a degree or any kind of education to know what he said. To me it was like telling me the sky is blue. Then again, I don't watch much TV news. The ones I try to make time for are the weekend political shows, because usually I get the stuff straight from the horse's mouth. If Obama or Axelrod or Hillary is on, I get to hear it straight from them. I don't need to hear a pundit encapsulate it for me.
I also disagree with at least a handful of his premises. I don't think the United States has any fewer readers than it ever has. We still sell books by the millions. People are reading newspapers less for any one of a zillion reasons, not the least of which is something he alludes to later - the Internet - and cable. If you just want the sports scores and the weather, you don't need to turn on the news.
People DID buy a lot more papers in the past. That's where everything was. The classifieds, the job postings, the ads - you weren't going to find it anywhere else. There weren't 24/7 news channels. There was the nightly news, and it was a half hour. With the Internet, I can read anything at any time, and the news can be seconds old.
In the past, tabloids sold more than the New York Times. Why? The racing form - the sports pages - the TV guide. And as I said, the classifieds. Why on earth would I buy a paper for that information now? The Internet has it clobbered in every way. Right now, I buy the Post for primarily one reason - to get the coupons and Sunday ads (I get only the Sunday paper). If I could get it without subscribing, I would.
I tend to trust pundits with their own shows the least, although they're entertaining. Why? Well, for one, they spend an awful lot of time in petty catfights. When anyone spends part of their show defending themselves in an on air "feud", it's not news, it's melodrama.
There's a guy who's on radio I love to listen to when I can. Jerry Doyle. He used to play "Garibaldi" on Babylon 5, but prior to his life on TV, he'd been a stockbroker and a fighter pilot. He's popularized a phrase you can look up on Wikipedia - "grapefruit mentality". The phrase comes from his position that if you point a camera at a grapefruit, you can make it become "news" if enough other people do the same thing. It's not "news" but created, manufactured news. Thus we have national stories about balloon boy, the runaway bride and so forth. Stuff that SHOULD NOT BE NEWS, but it is because someone thinks they can get your attention for it.
Which brings me back to one of my personal mantras, one I've mentioned often on here:
You are ALWAYS BEING MANIPULATED. *Always*. Everyone. Your kids, your friends, your TV shows, your culture. You can't avoid it, but you can at least be forearmed enough to know it is happening.
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