5 thoughts on “The Media’s Addiction Problem”

  1. It’s a really bad idea to rely on social media for “news”.

    I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the word “news” is comprised of all four letters from the directional points of a compass. Was that by accident or intent?

    It’s too bad that the social media meta-verse is always undergoing magnetic polar shifts.

    1. Depends on what kind of news you are after. It is a good way to see breaking events or be exposed to developments in many different fields because you can seek those things out relatively easy and you always have to be skeptical of what you come across. Our “news” media sucks and even on the right, it is all politics and commentary rather than a rightward slant to reporting on economics, technology, entertainment, ect.

      Interesting observation on the cardinal directions.

      1. Back in the early 80’s my local cable TV had a channel devoted to the raw AP wire. Black screen and white letters with a header and 2-to-3 sentences per story — as I understood it the feed was aimed at newspapers / TV stations to give the option of buying “the rest of the story” if they found the headers interesting.

        The point? I found it fascinating to see the same story show up in the local news and the various slants and editorial ‘interpretations’ often made me think that they were covering different stories! It really stoked my cynicism about the news process.

  2. It used to be that the local papers had local people who would and could provide details on local stories beyond what appeared in the newswire/press release. If you saw a particular byline, you knew there would be other info and original reporting.

    But for years now, when I see a local story of interest, any attempt to do a search for details always comes up with the same press release, often with the exact same headline. There’s also never a followup days later to fill in missing information from the original story, either. The profession of Journolism seems to be little more than copy/paste of press releases when not repeating the “hot takes” from Twitter.

    As for the AP ticker cable channel– I wanted something like that from my cable providers. Instead I got more shopping channels. I thought the original non-CNN “Headline News” was great– 30 minutes summary of what had happened recently repeated so it was available any time. Not interrupted by fluff “human interest” nonsense any more than a slow news day needed filler. Actual news and information, not the regurgitated Party Line opinions that CNN and Fox and the rest have peddled this century.

  3. Have they ever tested the lead levels in the water in Lackawanna?
    Love the name, seems apropos. You are always a part of where you came from.

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