I love the Daily Show. In fact, I am one of the millions of the MTV generation who gets my news primarily from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (after some research, I find that this is actually a good thing. My group can more readily identify foreign leaders and talk coherently about public affairs than anyone else...see study.) Sometimes I wish there was a 24-hr "Fake" News Channel...oh wait, there is:
Because I am in the U.K....I do not have the pleasure of being bombarded by the U.S. 24-hr news channels but John Stewart is nice enough to fill me in. What is wrong with CNN, MSNBC...and do I have to enquire about FOX NEWS? This whole thing about the Iran Elections has really made me wonder about the journalistic integrity of the 24-hr news stations (not that I didn't already have them suspect of fraud, but this is really bad.) When CNN adds a statement in the news reader lines at the bottom of the screen that reads "Unverified Material" because they are grabbing the information from "Twitter," "Facebook," and "MySpace"there is a major problem (I guess I could give them a little credit for actually siting that the information is Unverified...since they give us Unverified information all the time without telling us). What ever happened to having inside sources from maybe a local sister station? Surely we have Asian or Middle Eastern news informants that were not kicked out of Iran that we can get news from (Al-Jazeer perhaps?)...but no, were stuck with these so called "News Anchors" getting their information from Joe-Shmoe in cyberspace. There are instances where the BBC sends spy cameramen into areas they are banned from all the time (sorry I can't site this, though I did witness it last summer on BBC News 24...you'll just have to take my word for it), why don't we do the same thing (The Daily Show did)? Obviously, there is "real" information flying about because the stories about Iran are being printed in newspapers (oh how I will miss newspapers), so why is CNN even considering information from "Twitter?" It is so frustrating!!
Why are we even bothering with these news channels? They call The Daily Show with John Stewart the "fake" news...but how are they anymore fake than the 24 hr news networks. Though I don't like them, I feel the "opinion" shows on the 24 hr news channels (The O'Riely Factor and the like) are okay as long as we know they are "opinon" shows, because isn't that what free speech is all about, however, if it is going to be called a 24 hr NEWS channel, shouldn't the majority of the content be REAL news and not biased opinion?
Lately there is much talk about the decline of the newspaper. On an episode of The Daily Show, they mockingly interview the Chief of The New York Times. Samantha Bee asks why would we want to read about news that happened 24 hrs ago? My answer to this is...Because it has been researched and there is more depth to the analysis of the information being given. Even online articles are written with so much haste that there is hardly any story, just a headline, until at least 6-12 hrs has passed (Richard has actually corrected the BBC News site and the correction was accepted and posted a couple of hours later).
I think everyone just needs to take a deep breath. These 24 News Channels are feeding into our "I want it fast and I want it now" mentality and what happened is what closely resembles a High School hallway at lunch time...everyone thinks they have the scoop, but they didn't get the whole story and therefore judgement is passed before the truth has been revealed and rumour has dissipated. News programs are supposed to disband rumour and give us just the facts...right?
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