...or do you also find that news reporting of late is becoming more hysterical with each passing day? By "of late" I mean in the last few years. Perhaps it is only a characteristic of my particular online source of news (an internet service provider) but almost every headline contains words like shocking, horrifying, devastating, and other similarly alarming/provocative adjectives.
Maybe their entire staff consists of highly impressionable teen-agers who have no frame of reference except social media.
It just makes me wonder.
I say they should just report the facts and let me decide for myself how shocking, horrifying, devastating, or alarming it is. They should stop with all their editorializing. Most of all, I want them to stop trying to control my reactions, stop telling me what to think, stop doing their best to replace my conclusions with their conclusions.
America is still a free country and we still have freedom of speech here. I hope we always do. Do not be deceived, though. There are those who would take it away if they could. Some of them are on the left. Some of them are on the right. I hope they never can.
There are too many people who would love to get your right to have personal opinions. Good post.
ReplyDeleteRed, thanks. Your comment can be taken two ways and I don't know which way you meant it, that a lot of people would like to acquire it for themselves or a lot of people would like to take away mine. I suppose both are true.
DeleteI entirely agree. My way of solving my upset at what you describe is to no longer watch television News (I have not done so now for several years in fact) avoid all newspapers but my own local one and to focus on finding out the facts of what is going on in the world and weighing it up for myself.
ReplyDeleteRachel, thank you for agreeing with me! How exactly do you find out the facts if you avoid both televised news and printed newspapers?
DeleteIt is very difficult to find unbiased news channels, almost impossible. I consult Hansard for what is said in Parliament (the daily verbatim official record) when I want to check exactly what was said and at the weekend I read the Financial Times (like your Wall Street Journal), itself not entirely unbiased but much closer to the mark than the main stream media. My daily local newspaper has two pages of national and international news which they pick up from the News Agency which is theoretically unbiased. I go to source for company reports and financial information which gives a good indication of what is really happening in the economy and why and not the cherry picking, mis-quotes and hysteria that the MSM publish to sell newspapers.
DeleteI am also sick and tired of "BREAKINF NEWS!"... Jack Sprat yawned this morning. Will he need a nap or is it a sign that he will want breakfast?
ReplyDeleteEmma, when everything is urgent and important, nothing is urgent or important. In one sense, though, all news is breading news, otherwise it wouldn't be news.
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