What happened to trusted news?
There once was a time, not so long ago, when there were about 4 networks to choose from on television. Each network had two channels. In my town, channels 5 & 11 was CBS, 2 & 3 was NBC, ABC was 4 and 22. PBS was 8 and 16, giving us a mind blowing total of 8 channels! It was a good day when both the two channels ran by the same network had two different shows on. I also remember, not all the channels came in with the same clarity. How well the channel came in would be a deciding factor on what we watched. I would also have to go out and turn the antenna for the clearer picture to come in. Those were the days. Truth be told, tv is so easy to watch now. I think if people had to work as hard as I did as a child, they might be more critical of the content offered.
In our home, tv went something like this. The morning line up was the news, followed by some morning shows like the TODAY show. The programs vary by channel of course. Sometimes, morning tv was PBS with Bob Ross or the lady who did yoga. Once the morning was headed to lunch, it was time for game shows. In our house it was The Price is Right. Then once noon came, it was time for mid day news.
Cruising into the afternoon until about 4PM, soap operas played on all channels. My mother watched Days of our Lives and The Guiding Light. After daytime TV was over, it was talk shows making their way to the air waves, thanks to Phil Donahue. If I was good, instead, the After School Special and The Andy Griffith show were some of my favorites to watch.
At 6PM, the news would be on until 7pm, followed by Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. When evening game shows were over, primetime kicked in until 11pm. That's when you could watch the news again before bed. We always felt like we were getting fair and accurate information from our news and entertainment from tv shows. Television shows were pretty cut and dry. We knew what to expect when we turned on the TV.
The weekend was morning cartoons and Menudo, then a bunch of boring stuff that had me outside playing. Sunday of course, sports, sports and more sports, the news, then bed. At 12am every night, the networks would go off the air and it was white noise till about 5am.
The point is, there was limited channels and time slots. Everyone who had something to offer, got a time frame based on the content, not their own 24 hour channel. If you wanted game shows, you watched it when they came on or you missed it. If you wanted to know the news, catch it when it's on, or read it in the paper the next morning. If you missed an episode of your favorite show, catch it on the reruns. There was no 24 hour access to everything. It was also much harder to get on tv, too. We as well, didn't have to question the motivation behind the news. It was just news. It was stuff happening and we took it for what it was, trusting it was accurate.
Now that we know not everyone has a conventional 9-5 schedule, and time is money, the idea of tv at all times of the day and night seemed like the logical next step. With that comes big responsibility, especially with the invention of cable channels. Filling every single time slot for a channel can be challenging but networks quickly caught on. The major networks then started to fill their time from 12am to 5am with late night talk shows, infomercials and on sundays you could watch early morning church service from home.
It's a bit more challenging to fill a 24 hr time period every day when your network is based on the news and coming with an agenda. You would think so much goes on in the nation and world, there would always be newsworthy content. Not every story grabs national news attention nor do they want every story to gain National attention. These 24 hour channels rely on loops to fill time. The same news loop for 6 to 8 hours plays, only breaking from the schedule if some major event is happening. When I watched HLN I knew once I watched 2 hours of the news, it would repeat until about 1 in the afternoon. This works when you dont have tv in your face 24/7 or in a public place with different people coming and going. Other ways to fill the slot is with news shows like in present time, Fox, they have Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Judge Janine, The Five, all of which are opinion news based. But even they seem to stay in line with what they choose to bring to their shows. But you get the extras with opinion news, it allows more freedom to speak from a personal place. It also helps to extend the time in which the host spends on the topic. In journalism, when reporting just the news, we should never know the side the reporter is on. It should be cut and dry with facts and nothing more. Leaving more time to bring as many important stories to the time slot as possible.
In the earlier years, things like high speed chases were broadcast to fill time and quickly became ratings gold and setting a different standard on what people wanted to see and what is aired. Who cares if there is a high speed chase in LA, when you live in Georgia. Apparently, many people.
Now a days it seems like news channels are struggling to report on actual news or focus on something that isn't politically based. They are also too quick to throw a story out there without first cooberating the details, especially if it fits their agenda. It feels like the networks trusted to bring us news is trying to compete with all the other millions of channels that get good ratings for different reasons. Why? It's the news, regardless of what it is, it needs reported on and people will watch. Yet, these MSM outlets instead will make something so small and insignificant a major news story to avoid real headlines. MsM has almost become clickbait. They want to pull people in by political affiliation rather than be an unbiased source for all news no matter what it is. They want the stories with the most reactions and to get people all emotional like a reality TV show. For instance, CNN reporting on anything that can be spun negatively for our President or call him racists daily but won't report on the young black conservatives who went to the White House or even how big the rallies are when Trump speaks. It's all about narrative not news. However, the main sources for news have had a monopoly over our minds. We cant trust the news is real if one of these major networks doesn't pick up the story. They have been with use since forever and we have been conditioned to listen to them. They know this and are using our loyalty and trust as a weapon.
Now the entertainment side is intertwined with the political tone the news has set. Hollyweird elitist are coming out speaking their politics and publicly mocking our President. TV isn't so cut and dry anymore. Everyone has an agenda, everyone has a narrative. The quantity is massive, the quality, is crap!
When I walked away from the Democrat party, I found myself watching FOX News. This was new for me as I never would watch them before. When I realized the news i watched was biased, very left wing and always part of a story was reported and not the whole picture, that is when I turned on FOX to see if my view of their network changed.
I felt at home and it was odd. This whole new political environment has made me feel like my world got flipped upside down. I was so sure of what I knew until I saw I was being duped by a narrative. FOX News at that point was running on being all about covering the news and all the facts the left wing media wanted to leave out or spin in a different direction. I will never forget when Trump called MS-13 animals and how MSM flipped it and told their viewers Trump called illegal aliens, animals. Even Nancy Pelosi came out defending the gang over our President, saying in part, all people are born with a spark of divinity. Meanwhile, on FOX, its reported accurately without the spin. They also report on how CNN and other left leaning MSM reports the same stort.
I think back on the early days, when it was just those 5 networks and the ethics of journalists was important as well as love for the country. To even have someone in our government speak out in defense of a gang of illegals over our President, would have been reported on in an entirely different tone back then. It certainly would not have been celebrated by reporters or taken on as a fight to have with our POTUS by either party. Times have certainly changed.
When I started to watch FOX in 2016, they were proud of their reputation to bring you all the facts and debunk anything coming from left wing media. Yes, they do have bias but they are very open about being a conservative network. When you watch CNN, MSNBC, and those original networks PBS, NBC, CBS, and ABC, they act as if they are not at all bias and are bringing you the full scope of a story, when they know they aren't. When I stepped out from under CNN and took the time to take in another side of things, the difference was crystal clear. When you look at the news from a different perspective, that is when you are waking up. For instance, the Trayvon Martin case. I just knew I was getting all the facts from CNN and MSM. It wasn't until I walked away from the Democrat party and watched FOX News and independent media that I realized, those other networks were not telling the whole story nor were they reporting on it in the same way. I was shocked! It made me start to question everything i knew from MSM.
These people, all of them, FOX, CNN, MSNBC, all MSM has an affect over the people watching. Knowledge is power, when you are the one with the knowledge, there is great power in how it is delivered to others. Leaving out information or even spinning facts to fit in a narrative is a manipulation of knowledge. We are trusting that these networks are giving us all we need to know and in reality they are feeding us what they want us to know.
When your mind makes that connection, you see things so much more clearly. Now, I try to find multiple sources and listen to as many different sides as I can to gain a full picture. Thankfully, there are good people out there who understand the integrity of journalism. No one is perfect but I have found the most accurate information comes from independent media on youtube. Thankfully, the invention of cable and internet, free thinkers backed by a bill of rights are using the technology to push passed the media that has been driven by politics and not giving people the news we need to hear. Could you imagine if we were still stuck with eight channels, all of which, are in today's standards very left leaning platforms? We all would be running around with half assed information designed to pull us to their side, their narrative, their desired outcome.
It is hard to weed out the opinion part in the evolution of reporting the news because the independant format is different. But these out of the box channels do have all the facts of the story before then diving into their opinion. There is competition now for MSM news and it's sad, that competition was bred from the tragic destruction of MSM through manipulation or absence of facts.
At least people are waking up and understanding what is happening. You would think FOX News would be in a prime position to be a trusted source of information and build from the momentum they got when Trump was elected President. They could ride the wave forever of being a trusted conservative news source by sticking to the ethics of journalism. Pretty simple right? But no, FOX is now digging a hole just as deep and just as wide as CNN.
You would think they would be the ones to know better. They speak everyday on the topic of ingrety and the rules of journalism and our Bill of Rights. I thought for sure, FOX would be the closest example of presenting the news correctly.
Opinion hosts brag of our rights and law and order and do the right thing. Yet, with a million channels out there, you think they would want to stick out as the trusted group of press by simply following the rules of law and journalism as their foundation. But as I mentioned earlier, everyone has an agenda and apparently so does FOX news.
Recently, FOX fired contributor Micheal Knowels for daring to say the climate change girl Greta, has a mental illness. What happened to not being a snowflake triggered by mob rules? What happened to dont apologize and dont be so easily offended? Why the shift from FOX all the sudden? Then a week later, after Trey Goudy announces he is helping Trump through the impeachment bs, hes fired too.
Hello, FOX News, anyone over there listening? You aren't one of 5 networks anymore. We have so may choices to stay current without ever going to CNN, MSNBC, THE HILL, HUFFINGTON POST AND YES, FOX!
Yet, here they go making moves like CNN and now punishing people if there is a loud enough negative reaction. Having endless choices in this sense is a good thing. It allows us to pull from many sources, and come to a more educated conclusion. But it is bad for MSM. FOX knew this, they make fun of CNN's ratings every chance they get. So, why now are they seemingly another outlet controlled by the left?
All these channels and all this interweb space and we cant get even ONE decent news source that we can trust is doing their job with the integrity ? FOX has been on a roll and they blew it.
Maybe the news needs to be back on a strict timeline of 3 times a day and the newspaper going out once a day. Maybe if they had but so much time to present a story, they would take it more seriously. Instead of reporting across the globe a half assed story to fit a narrative or to just be the first to report it, the time you pay to be on air is used in a more professional manner.
Entertainment tv can do what they like. But the news should have a different standard that is met before announcing it to the world. If MSM cant get back to its roots maybe we need someone to chop down the tree.
Thankfully, we have choices but it takes time for a new source to build an audience that trusts them. Although the evolution of tv has been great for the industry and consumer, we are losing out when it comes to staying current on facts from trusted press. The number of trusted press in MSM is pretty low.
What do you think? Do you think too much air time and a political agenda is killing journalism? Do you have an outlet you do trust? Do you remember the times before everyone had a channel? Comment below!