What is news anymore? What should news be?

[jandrews]

It seems at least once a week I check digg.com and it is full of worthless little tidbits about rocket boots or someone figuring out how to shoot dogs with laser beams or something equally ridiculous and uninformative. The tv news is filled with Paris Hilton stories as well as airlines kicking off girls in short skirts. The other half of the news is filled with people who got murdered.

I never thought I would get to the point where I started believing news media needed some sort of regulation. People watch what entertains them if they have a choice. People need to watch news about Iraq and about the Iraqii people and how they actually used to be three different countries. Hell, when given a choice I would look at some hot chicks rack 10 out of 10 times instead of news about soldiers dying or the history of the middle east, its just natural. I am not sure where this country is going or if news was ever really 'newsworthy'. Where do you think we are going in the future? If the trend is any precedent(sp) then the future holds almost exclusive entertainment related news sigh.

 

[Pabster]

If I had my way, they'd be re-running footage of 9/11 on a daily basis. Americans have become complacent.

As for why you see so many short-skirt stories and Paris Hilton shenanigans...sex sells.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Pabster
If I had my way, they'd be re-running footage of 9/11 on a daily basis. Americans have become complacent.

As for why you see so many short-skirt stories and Paris Hilton shenanigans...sex sells.

Yeah, because the 3,000 Americans killed that day are more important than the ~40k that are killed yearly by firearms in this country (I'm pro-gun btw).

9/11 shouldn't be forgotten. Neither should it be continually used as an excuse for disastrous foreign policy. If anything, it should be a call to secure our country, STARTING with those who perpetrated it, and combined with a solution for our border leaks. Nothing but crickets from both the left and the right on these fronts, lately. The 9/11 plotters/perpetrators were mostly Saudi, supported by a regime installed in the Afghan territory, with operators freely moving to and from NW Pakistan.

Are you trying to tell me that Americans are complacent because they don't support idiocy like the Iraqi campaign? How many of the 9/11 terrorists were from Iraq, I forgot.

 

[jonks]

I'm not complacent, I'm fatalistic. If they nuke NYC or gas our subways or suicide bomb Times Square, there isn't much I can do about it. I wouldn't call Israelis complacent and attacks still get through there. I just refuse to live in fear.

 

[Moonbeam]

I think we are destined to become storage batteries maintained by machines is some huge structures in the future, drip fed and plugged into a virtual world created by computers. There we will shop unless somebody offers us a red pill that causes us to feel what we really feel. Then we will find ourselves flushed down a toilet into la la land and sugar plum fairies and moonbeams will dance through our heads.

 

[Craig234]

I've long had a view of what news 'should' be.

Here's what my newspaper or TV newscast would be like:

It should aim to educate all its viewers about 'how society works'. News is *not* the trivial things like robberies and fires and car chases and celebrities. It *is* things such as 'corporations are now behaving differently as a trend in this way', 'citizens are now more or less in poverty this much for these reasons', and 'here are the powerful people and organizations in the community and what they are doing'. It would aim for people to know what's going on and to give them info useful for them to contact their elected representatives with. It would include historical context - so, there's a 'mortgage crisis'? Is it real or not? How does the industry work, are the crises cyclical, how should people react to it, who gains and loses, is there wrongdoing and are there things people can recommend to legislators in regulating the industry?

Similarly, the Iraq War coverage would not only cover what government leaders on all significant sides were saying, but some context - are there propaganda techniques being used? Are leaders contradicting themselves (you shouldn't have to see that only on The Daily Show)? What other agendas appear to be going on?

I'd have a lot of good authors on to talk about topics, such as, 'what does it mean that the level of private contracters is at a historic high in Iraq? What is good and bad about that approach, and what issues are raised for the future by it?'

News today IMO is actively harmful for people, wasting their time with trivia.