Anyone here actually watch the news on TV?

[mattsaccount]

I gave up on TV news years ago. Now, I just read it online. I'm subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, and I regularly peruse CNN. I quit watching it on TV for several reasons:
- There's much less content.
- The news you get is decided for you--it's much harder to "pick and choose" the stories you're most interested in.
- The commercials are not aimed at my demographic (I'm in college, but the ads seem targetted at people with major health problems).

Do you actually watch news, on TV?

 

[Tab]

I generally just read what I see on google news, works great for me.

 

[her209]

I watch the national news... the local news is always so depressing.

 

[Screech]

Used to watch cbs evening news. Now it sucks, they fill it with a lot more drivel.

 

[Jeff7]

"If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed." - Mark Twain

News sources put out news that is 1) Able to attract and keep viewers, 2) not offensive to the personal beliefs of the executives in the company, 3) not offensive to shareholders, and 4) not offensive to advertisers.
Hypothetical: If Pepsi is a big advertiser for CNN, and a low-key study comes out that shows that Pepsi causes brain cancer, is CNN going to go to great lengths to air this story? Probably not. Now if Coke-sponsored NBC finds out about this, they are going to make it their big issue and run specials about it for a week, meanwhile Coke will go on about how no studies have ever shown that their product causes cancer. (Which could be true in two ways, one of which being simply that no studies were ever done at all.)

So the news you receive has been filtered on multiple levels. The eyewitness at the scene, the reporter, the broadcasting company, the advertisers - they can all have an impact on which news is aired. Even things like Youtube are not immune. Lets say it's found that Youtube's owner likes eating kittens, and someone posts a video on Youtube about it. Do you think that they won't pull that video quicker than two shakes of a kitten's freshly Shake'n'Baked tail? (Bad play on two shakes ofa lamb's tail, sorry.)

 

[tommywishbone]

Yes. Lots of pretty pictures and boob jobs.

 

[sandorski]

yes

 

[nageov3t]

if you pick and choose the stories you read, aren't you really closing yourself off?

anyways... I read the NYTimes and Washington Post online (rss feeds ftw), and watch The Daily Show and Meet the Press. occasionally, I'll watch CNN (and Fox News too if it's not Bill O'Reilly, Hannity, or Neil Cavuto). only really when there's nothing else on tv or I just want some background noise, though.

 

[Aisengard]

No. I mainly read WikiNews and Google News. TV news is all junk. The Daily Show is funny, though.

 

[Willoughbyva]

I haven't watched much tv in a couple years.


Perry

 

[conjur]

Get most of my news from the internets.

 

[Eos]

I stopped watching local news about 5 years ago. Cable 'news' followed about 2 years later.

It's all crap.

 

[Azndude2190]

CNN...thats about it.

 

[ericlp]

Originally posted by: Tab
I generally just read what I see on google news, works great for me.

Same here! Way better, faster, and.... hardley any ads. Besides, you take the evening news these days they have to cram all of the news into a half hour minus the ads, 15 minutes... Now you know they are not telling you the whole story! They are just spoon feeding you little bits of blurbs and the highlights that they THINK you might be interested in most. They never really cover the whole story. Most of the stations like FOX, and ABC leans more towards the real religious people I think.

It's all just soft crud... Your getting the crumbs that are left in the bottom of the bag. It's pretty weak... But, what do you expect? About 80% of the viewers are idiots and can't understand most of it anyway. Sigh..... Sad but true.

And have you ever watched the news? Most of it is on 9/11 "WHO CARES!!!" Turn it off ... It really does rot the brain. It's worse then going to church, at least at church they are brainwashing you and hey! You won't even know it!!!

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

I don't watch Faux because it is, IMO, so strongly biased that you could hardly call it journalism.

I rarely watch CNN because it's normally filled with all the celebrity drivel, missing white girl, blah blah blah.

I don't watch MSNBC because nearly all their shows, except Olbermann's (Which is actually pretty good), suck.

If I had to choose though from the big three though, I'd go with CNN Headline News. They cut all the crap out that regular CNN normally has.

Sadly, the best news shows are on Comedy Central. :heart: Colbert & Stewart

 

[fallenangel99]

CNN.. because they have cute anchors (the girls that is)

 

[Schadenfroh]

I watch Fox and CNN, I find both amusing.

 

[fallenangel99]

double post

 

[ProfJohn]

Fox news some times, Brit Humes's show, especially the round table.
No local at all, to much BS about who killed who.

Read yahoo news for the big picture and then National Review online to get the "right" side of what is going on.

May have to try google after seeing you all talk about it.

 

[computersshopper]

I generally read news on forbes, new york times, bbc, & telegraph news sites & blog. I hate watching news on TV as there are tons of ad in between.

 

[ntdz]

Originally posted by: Tab
I generally just read what I see on google news, works great for me.

Same here, usually google news first, then bbc, drudge and cnn...

 

[Aimster]

I watch FoxNews

Great entertainment...

 

[Thump553]

I hadn't watched network TV news for at least a decade, but early this year I got inot the habit of catching CBS News with Bob Schiefer, which was excellent in my opinion. Almost a flashback to the Walter Cronkite era, but different. Schiefer would ask the reporters very good followup questions to their stories. Most of the other shows have now adopted this technique, but it's usually pretty clear there that the questions and answers are pre-rehearsed and amount to little more than fluff.

I caught part of the new Katie Couric show on two different days, but just as I feared, CBS has now turned the national news show into a clone of the Today Show/Entertainment Tonight. Not for me.

The evening news on PBS can be very good, but to be frank Fox News, et al. have made me reacted poorly to any panel discussions these days.

Morning Edition and All Things Considered on NPR remain excellent drive time fare and probably my main news source. The rest of NPR's news/discussion shows are pretty much worthless.

I read the state newspaper every day (I was a paperboy for it in my youth), our pretty good local weekly and once or twice a week at least parts of the local news.

No blogs for me-occassionally I will check out CNN.com, MSNBC or (shudder) FoxNews, but FoxNews mostly to determine what the Bush Administration's spin de jure is.

I avoid like the plague quasi-news services like blogs and the drudge report, and essentially any political book that is on the bestseller list.

 

[mattsaccount]

if you pick and choose the stories you read, aren't you really closing yourself off?

Heh, let's consider this for a moment.

Here are the current headlines on CNN. This will of course, likely change, but they serve to illustrate my point:

* Man arrested after crashing Capitol barricade
* Experts search for source of E. coli outbreak
* Update on space station status
* Bike bomb kills NATO troops giving candy to kids
* First female space tourist blasts off | Video
* Bomb targeting Somalia's president kills 8
* Pope's apology fails to quell Muslim fury | Video
* SI.com: 5 Duquesne basketball players shot
* Girl sends text message, escapes captor | Video
* JFK's sister Patricia Lawford dies
* Time.com: What would war with Iran look like?
* Gallery: Unjoined twins: 'Hey, everybody, it's us'
* CNN Wire: Latest updates on world's top stories

Of these stories, the 2nd, 3rd, and 11th are the only ones I feel interested in reading right now. Do I care what the Pope says? Do I care who bombed who lately? Do I can about basketball players? No.

"Picking and choosing" is a necessity to filter out all the crap that isn't interesting or relevant to me. Now, I should emphasize that other people undoubtedly hold different interests, and would thus read different stories. I bet there are even people out there who would read all of these stories except the ones I listed.