News

According to my Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, News is: 1. A report of recent events 2 a: material reported in a newspaper or news periodical or on a newscast b: matter that is newsworthy.

By these definitions I guess you could claim that CNN meets the first two. But the first two are trivial compared with b. I used to watch CNN pretty faithfully. I no longer watch it at all, unless I want a quick look at how the market is faring. I don't watch it because it doesn't meet the definition of "matter that is newsworthy." I guess the idea of a 24/7 news channel might have been a good idea. It might still be if it, indeed, traded in news that is newsworthy. And if they didn't take news in the sense of a report on recent events rather than news that is newsworthy. What is newsworthy about another car chase in Los Angeles? They have car chases in Los Angeles virtually every day. But when CNN focusing on one you can be sure they will spend the greater part of the day on it. And when there is a story that is somehow newsworthy, like the phony terrorist plot in Miami, they not only tell you about it, and tell you that it didn't amount to much, but then tell you more and more about it until you want to scream for mercy. Okay, there were these seven nutcases in Miami who talked about blowing up the Sears tower, but they had no money, no explosives, no contact with terrorists, no way of possibly doing anything, but we have to listen to detail after detail after detail about something that didn't even happen, couldn't happen, and was basically nonsense.

Then we have the endless news about a disappearing white girl. I think announcing that a white girl disappeared is news. But does it deserve days and days of attention? I'm sure that more than one white girl disappears fairly regularly, and there is no doubt in my mind that black girls do also. But these routine disappearances are not even announced let alone obsessed on for days on end.

Now we have Anderson Cooper, in prime time, conducting a two hour interview with a woman who just had a baby (apparently an absolutely unique event, not only in general, but also in Hollywood). This at the same time there is a pitched battle taking place right outside the Green Zone in Iraq, about which they say nothing, or certainly next to nothing. True to their Republican owners they tell us about the horrors of gay marriage, flag burning, and abortion, but nothing about the disaster that is Iraq, Afghanistan, the national debt, our completely dysfunctional medical system, the stolen elections, and so on. And if and when they do mention some of these problems it is always uncritically biased toward the administration.

As far as news is concerned, CNN, and the other major networks are hopeless. They might as well not exist. In fact, we'd be better off if they didn't exist. Once when I was living on the Big Island I tuned in the local news every morning. The news usually took the form of Mrs. Ikeda's son ran over one of Mrs. Wong's chickens, or some otherwise notable event. I was surprised one morning when the announcer simply said, "there is no news today." That's exactly the way I feel about the MSM at the moment. They are an absolute disgrace, engaged in the same criminal enterprise the Republican party is engaged in. They are no more news organizations than Bush's fake ranch is anything other than an old pig farm.