Thread: The Cable Effect

The Cable Effect


I got to the office a bit before 9AM today and within 20 minutes I felt incredibly agitated. I was pissed off. I also had a feeling of despair about the prospects for health reform. I was mad, and I also felt helpless. What was wrong? Was it just a bad case of the Mondays? Regrets for being back in the cubicle after so many weeks on the road?

Then it hit me. I wasn’t unplugged by any means over the past three weeks. I kept blogging and kept reading blogs. I read the newspapers and I even watched the news on television. But what I watched was CNN International and BBC World News. There’s a world of difference between those networks and even the relatively staid domestic version of CNN. And at the office they had the sound on for Fox News. Bill Hemmer & co. were spinning half-truths, deceptions, and outright falsehoods at a staggering rate. Meanwhile you could see frenetic action on MSNBC and CNN and if I felt like really making myself dizzy could even follow the action on closed caption.

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Matthew Yglesias The Cable Effect

I agree with him! I noticed it last week, we were in Canada and my news was CBC and The Globe and Mail. I was reading more of the paper, and the news was not a bunch of URGENT BREAKING NEWS and back and forth 'this side', now 'that side'. There was actually discussion of stuff.

Of course, I was busy doing other stuff, so my daily news diet was considerably less, but the freaky quotient was missing.


I do remember an article asking wtf is wrong with Americans getting pissed at Obama for the IOC Committee's voting. They talked about the messed up, secret voting and how it should be reformed. I guess in the States all there was was stupid yelling about how Obama diminished America and got his ass spanked. So dumb.

I totally agree. The cable networks are not reporting news, they are just caught up in trying to make the other side look bad. It comes as no surprise that other nations find it hard to take us serious anymore.

Originally Posted by BlueFlame

I totally agree. The cable networks are not reporting news, they are just caught up in trying to make the other side look bad. It comes as no surprise that other nations find it hard to take us serious anymore.

Heya, Blue, thx for the response, and nice to meetcha! Welcome to DP

Try some C-Span in the mornings.
You'll hear the top headlines discussed and from people from both left and right, without yell-fests or even commercials.

And at the office they had the sound on for Fox News. Bill Hemmer & co. were spinning half-truths, deceptions, and outright falsehoods at a staggering rate.

Does it surprise anyone, that the writer of that piece makes those all too familiar accusations we hear from the left, day in and day out, without elaborating on them?

I wonder why that is?

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Originally Posted by j-mac

I think you have to seperate the "hard news" shows from the commentary/entertainment shows. If you do that you would find very little difference in any of them including FOX.


j-mac

Thx for the response, but no, I don't think so. I didn't see any URGENT BREAKING NEWS and all the other stuff. And the 'hard news' programs are interspersed with 'newsmakers' and 'pundits' who just give you smaller bites of what the hour-long opinion shows give you.