The Objective Media
Where has it gone? When did it go exactly? If you know the answer to these two questions, please, feel free to share, because I don’t know. Now don’t get me wrong, there are still some objective reporters out there, just very few of them. I won’t got off on a tangent throwing names around, but every major news outlet is guilty of taking sides instead of looking at issues in an objective manner.
Personally, I watch Fox News, and for those nay sayers that never have anything good to say about Fox News, don’t speak too quickly unless you plan to throw CNN, MSNBC, and all the others in there too, as they’re all guilty as well. Fox News runs some bias through sometimes, however the others do it on an even more consistent basis. I’ve been turned off to a lot of it all as a result. I find I’m watching less news these days for the fact that everyone is either regurgitating the same thing, or spouting off their opinion about something instead of actually reporting the pros and cons of each issue.
However I will step up and take one swing at the big leagues, and while I know he’ll probably never read this or anything else I have to say, it doesn’t change the truth of the matter in the least bit and I’m sure I’ll have some people that are in agreement with me on this one.
I was watching the O’Reilly Factor last night, I had set the channel to change when House came on, but for some reason it never changed, so I ended up watching part of his show while I was playing the new guitar I got the other day. Generally, Bill says a lot of stuff that makes a lot of sense, and he’s right on some issues, however there is generally always some segment of his show that I don’t agree with, whether it be the issue itself, or the way he presents the issue.
A segment of his show last night was what would the rest of the country be like if we had San Francisco’s morals and values. First of all, why is this even a segment? I’m sure there are a lot more important things going on in the world that he could cover besides what San Francisco may be like. I have to say, he has never had much love for California, mostly because he believes that they have poor morals and also because it is a largely Democrat state. It’s no secret he doesn’t like most Democrats.
The entire segment features a reporter interviewing different people on the streets, however it only covers a handful of things. Most of the segment was about people being able to openly smoke marijuana and then trying to directly relate that to homeless people “hippies” traveling in groups and staying in parks and pretty much being a problem, though that problem is never actually stated. The segment also seems to try and link smoking marijuana with crime problems in the city and the fact that certain places aren’t safe to go at night and how New York is a much safer city. There was also a comment about the reporting watching a drug deal go down outside of city hall, but most of me says BS on that. It seems to me though, that if there were police actually patrolling these problem areas, they would be a lot safer, and that it has very little to do with marijuana, which he seems to try and demonize the entire time. He also goes on to show pictures of cross dressers, hookers, and pornography shops. There was also footage of bad parts of town as well.
After watching the segment, not factoring anything in, yeah the city seems pretty horrible and you would be led to be in agreement with him. However if you are so weak minded that you readily accept what he tries to spoonfeed people on a regular basis, you easily miss that most big cities are not very different from San Francisco and that we only saw the bad parts of the city and none of the good parts. Instead of attacking the problems and providing solutions, the entire segment seemed like a smear campaign against the city and marijuana, and to a lesser extent, gay people. It seems like several people on Fox News have a problem with gay marriage as well and it seems to me that they have been very partial to the new law that was recently voted on and passed and have been against the gay rights protesters.
There will come a point when big media gets so sloppy that they start clearing the path for smaller contenders to come in and do the job better unless they start to shape up.
Two of my previously written articles that relate to this thread that may be of interest are Gay Marriage and Taking A Controversial Stance