24 Hour News Blues — Good or Bad — [POLL]

24 hour news strikes again.

I’m not going to rake CNN over the coals for their stupid bungling of the Boston situation. I’m going to blame the media in general. In fact, I’m going to blame all of mass media and us, the viewers.

Here, in a nutshell, is the problem as I see it.

If you are going to report news 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you’ve got to have some news to report. Now, that sounds pretty basic but, let’s face it; there will not always be enough compelling news of national interest to provide fodder for that machine. So, what happens?

Well, dear friends, I’ll tell you exactly what happens. You stop informing and start entertaining. You start reporting as “news” what movie stars are doing.  You elevate absolute wastes of DNA like Lindsey Lohan and anyone named Kardashian to celebrity status. It also leads to an awful lot of that great Olympic event known as “Jumping the Gun.”

Yes, CNN jumped the gun and now everyone is all over them about it. Of course, as we all know, none of the other “news” sources has ever done that. The problem goes deeper than that. Let's call it the news media's attitude of the "Right to Know."

Reporters love that "Right to Know" phrase. they use it to intimidate and bully sources to give them information that could actually be detrimental to an investigation or, in some cases, to the lives of people involved. These "reporters" don't care about that sort of thing. they don't care about protecting an investigation. They don't even care about national security. They do care about themselves. they care about themselves a lot. They love to make it look like they care about the general public's "right to know." Don't you buy it for a minute.

These "reporters" love the image of the "crusader for truth", but it's a phony image. They care about making themselves look good. Anyone who tells you different is selling something. (I stole that line from "Princess Bride")

I truly feel that 24 hour news coverage has killed reporting.The importance of informing the public has been replaced with a desperate attempt to just keep talking.  In an effort to fill all that time, network news has dropped to a level of shoddiness that would have appalled true reporters of the past.

So, this leads us to our poll question:

Do you think that 24 hour news hurts or helps?