NEWS today is entertainment, not sources of factual information. Sadly, anyone wanting real news will have to work hard to find it and then work even harder to digest it.
Watching TV network news today is a deceptive endeavour. Viewers believe they are getting the facts. Meanwhile, look at the video clips, sensation, violent, explosive…the kind of the things that excite and titillate. TV screens also display banners previewing the next news clips that will be displayed, confirming user attention spans as being minimal. “If we don’t tease you with another tidbit tantalizer, we’re going to lose you,” is the philosophy.
If viewers watch the news as their source of entertainment, then the average network, the regular newspaper is their media of choice. The regular media is in desperate decline, its days numbered. Those with diminishing subscriber lists are disappearing as quickly as trees in British Columbia. Time Magazine, Maclean’s, The Toronto Sun, gone the way of the dodo. Toronto’s Globe and Mail, National Post, demise imminent. Step one is going digital, again pandering to the technological bent, the ones who have ever-diminishing attention spans and always increasing demand for titillation and stimulation.
Want real news? It is becoming ever-increasingly difficult to find real news, factual reporting that you can depend on for truth and credibility. Forget CNN, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC and even CBC, CITY, and CFTO. These news sources must entertain and excite to retain the quickly eroding patrons they still have. But real reporting still exists, reporting where there is depth, analysis, truth and fact as much as can be expected in this world in which we live.
Here are the best news sources today in our view based on their own philosophies of authenticity, objectivity and veracity:
TV news is bases almost exclusively on titillation and sensationalism. Much of it is intellectually insulting as it shows the same video clips repeatedly as if viewers have poor memories or little intelligence. But to stay in business they must cater to the masses and pander to the pedestrian.
