Saturday, January 30, 2010

Stop the Presses!!! (forever)

Is it any wonder newspapers are on their way to the "Defunct Industries" exhibit at the Smithsonian? This article from the Boston Globe elevates an obviously life-lacking geneologist's revelation that Senator-elect Brown is a 10th-cousin of President Obama to "breaking news" status and posits that this might be a portent of increased cooperation across the aisle.

Notwithstanding the pabulum that seems to fill more and more of ALL news outlets' media (TV especially), it seems that the days of newspaper reporters doing research, checking their facts and, even using proper grammar and spelling are becoming a distant memory. But what really irks me more than anything about this lazy journalism is that if there really is such a dearth of newsworthy activity that an article like this one makes the cut, do you 1st Amendment-Cloaked Idealists think you might take a peek at, oh, I don't know, maybe ONE OF THE WARS IN WHICH WE ARE ENGAGED? Do you think you might for a minute try to find out something about what the young men and women who haven't seen their families in a year are doing while Hollywood starlets OD on cocaine and diet pills, goofy-looking evening talk show hosts engage in their best impressions of girlfighting and geneologists yearn to discover common ancestry, however distant and irrelevant?

Why is it we have to search so hard to find stories of heroism among our troops? It's not as if heroism isn't occurring. MSM--here's breaking news for you. Bush is gone. It's okay to report good news from the front again. You could even twist it to make our new Commander-in-Chief look as if he's strong on defense. It's really okay now. Go ahead, it won't hurt. I promise.

2 comments:

Sally said...

Sadly, America would rather read about what the Kardashian sisters are having for lunch than a story about a heroic soldier.

Anonymous said...

If nothing else, the article showed that the Dendrology (the study of trees) and Pomology (the study of fruits) could reveal that an otherwise healthy tree is capable of producing both healthy and diseased fruit.

I will allow the readers to decide which of the politicians discussed falls into which catagory.

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