I am sitting at home in the states. It is any old night. I decide, against my better judgement, to turn on the television and see what is on the evening news. All of the news stations, at least through my cable provider, are clumped together. I pull up the menu. There is fox news--okay, I am not watching that. Then there is MSNBC--again, I am definitely not watching that. Next down the line is CNN. Okay, a bit of CNN is good. But, a lot of it is starting to look more and more like the other two stations I mentioned. CSPAN comes next: they were running 24 hours of real-time footage of an ant nest. I was not interested in going into a coma, so I turned it off. Next was the evening news with NBC or CBS. ugh! And then, to make matters worse, I arrived at the local news.
Local news, how should I describe it. Here is one way. I decided that night to watch the news, not realizing the post-traumatic stress disorder I would suffer for the next week. For the next half hour they made my local town, Cleveland Ohio, sound like it was sin city, filled with the worst sort of political, economic, and moral depravity known to humanity. And, on top of it, they kept telling me a snow storm was coming; but i had to wait 20 minutes to find out--in fact, that is how they went to everyone commercial.
"....So, that leaves ten dead and twenty more bodies to be found. Back to you Jed."
"Well, folks, what a weather storm we have headed your way. Find out if you will you wake up dead tomorrow, in a snow drift, with half your leg eaten away by best friend. THIS IS CHANNEL FIVE NEWS!"
"Ohhhh my god," I started screaming. I told my wife and daughter what might happen and phoned my family and friends; they all came over our house and we hid in the basement until the commercials were over, wondering what the weather folks would reveal.
Actually, my daughter was sitting next to me, streaming, in real-time, on her iphone, ipad and ipod touch both the weather and the latest news from all over the world, so I turned off the TV and decided to drink vodka instead.
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Switch to Dusseldorf Germany. Same sort of any old night. I am in my hotel room and decide, against my better judgement, to turn on the television and see
what is on the evening news. All of the news stations, at least through
my hotel's cable provider, are clumped together. I pull up the menu.
I suddenly realize, I am not in Ohio anymore. WOW! On the television is BBC News, BBC Parliament, BBC World News, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera French, then there was Euronews and a handful of German news stations, then a handful of French news stations. I could not believe it!
Of course, don't get me wrong. In the UK, for example, they love tabloid news; and one of the widest circulating tabloids in Europe is the German newspaper, Bild. But, Europeans have a much clearer sense of the difference between tabloid and real news. Tabloid is for fun; news is for information.
In the states, however, the boundary line has all but disappeared. As an example, tabloid news is actually called alternative news--what does that mean?--as if the purpose of these tabloids is to offer a discerning public genuine news alternatives. I could go on. you get my point.
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Back in the states again... This time, however, I do not even bother. Instead, I turn off my television, turn on my computer, pour myself a vodka, and do something novel. I decide to read a book.
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