Red, White, Blue, and Yellow, Reprise 0
Rick Steves is fed up with cable news; he suggests that television news now foments fear for funding. A snippet.
But times have changed, and now corporations have a legal responsibility to maximize short-term profits for their shareholders. They’ve started sexing up, spicing up and bloodying up the news to boost ratings. And 24/7 news channels have to amp up the shrillness to make recycled news exciting enough to watch.
In a sense, news has become entertainment masquerading as news. Now an event is not news, it’s a “crisis.”
The drek to information ratio of TV news, cable or not, is off the scale.
The last time I watched a television news show was a couple of years ago when we had (I kid you not) a white Christmas. We watched local TV News reporters standing around shocked! shocked! I tell you, that below-freezing temperatures are cold and slippery streets lead to car crashes.
At least their findings were factual.
