As the days of summer become almost unbearable, I have actually begun watching TV news.
I actually swore off of televised news earlier this year when Headline News -- the last bastion of real news on the tube -- fell victim to the wave of idiocy that is overwhelming the medium.
Headline News used to be what news should be. It used to be a guy sitting behind a tesk, telling you what the hell happened in the world today. There were no pundits, no cult of personality, just reporting.
Now, Headline News consists of exactly that. There's Robin Meade, the perky, "sassy" anchor who repeatedly comments and ad-libs on every story. There's AJ Hammer and his lackeys who employ the same journalistic techniques and cover the same stories as the tabloids. And there's Lou Dobbs, who I can't watch without being eerily reminded of the proganda-head "Voice of Britain" from the movie V for Vendetta. Dobbs, by the way, has styled himself as "
Then there's Nancy Grace, who has truly raised the bar in terms of journalism-destroying inanity. The drawling, self-styled "Defender of Justice" relies almost entirely on her strength of personality (read: aggravatingly intense hubris that overwhelms any discussion). She routinely calls up investigating officers, repeatedly grilling the officers, investigators, and lawyers involved in the case for their supposed incompetance.
In many ways, the fall of Headline News is symptomatic of the fundamental flaw in TV journalism -- it has become entertainment, rather than journalism.
The executives that run this show are hardly at fault for this. They are businesses, and if they were to acutally maintain the highest standards of journalism, then they would fail.
So the fault is yours, America. The fault is yours for caring more for about laughs and listening to pundits rave than for getting real news. The fault is yours for following the people who tell the news rather than the news they tell.
Stop it. I want my boring -- but useful -- old guy behind the desk back.
