Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Copycat Media

Thursday I was at a friend's house and she had the tv on and turned to CNN. While I was waiting on her I watched a bit of that news. Now, I'm one of those who thinks that one of the biggest problems in this country is the media. And that was confirmend by what happened Thursday. CNN ran a story on GOP Presidential candidate McCain's problems with his teleprompters. I paid attention to this story out of sheer startlement that they were covering something so inane. I know, I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but I can't help. Stupidity never fails to amaze me.

Anyway, later that night, before I went to bed I turned on the local news to catch the weather because there was a chance of storms overnight and I wanted to find out what the forecast was. Around here in spring you don't take chances. I was a bit early and before the weather were a couple of other stories. One of them was the teleprompter story. This was the EXACT SAME story CNN ran. I mean identical -video clips, words, the banter between the anchors. The only difference was that it was local anchors doing the story.

What happened here? Does the media now download their stories from a central source and fill-in-the-anchor? Apparently. Whatever happened to a free and independent media? Oh right, that disappeared about the same time as many of our constitutional rights.

Without adequate information, people can not make informed choices. Given the advertising in this country, a lot of them don't make "choices" at all. We can't expect the average person to understand things like climate change, peak oil, overshoot, and the like when they get their info from copy-the-story. When they pay attention to the news at all.

Sometimes, I think the changes that are coming to this society can't come fast enough.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey there,
I would love it if you'd post more. I check your blog everyday as your previous posts have really inspired me.
hope all is well,
robyn

4/15/2008 4:36 PM  

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