Mon 7 Jan 2008
I wanted to share some of the favorite “Featured Headlines” I’ve seen on the internet recently:
* Girl’s fake essay wins Hannah Montana tickets
* Sweet surprise: Lost ring turns up in fudge
* Foul-mouthed customer leaves big tip
* $2 filing cabinet yields big dividends
* Man refuses to take out trash for a year
* Woman dons bikini for icy New Year dip
Did these come from the Onion? Wrong. Sadly, these are from CNN.
It is appalling how much sensationalism and celebrity news has taken over all mainstream media. If the story doesn’t jolt you for a second and then slide off your brain, it won’t get shown. Any story requiring any amount of thought or showing real world issues won’t play to the attention deficient masses.
When I went to CNN headline news the other day to get some coverage about the Iowa caucuses, Larry King and Anderson Cooper were too busy dissecting the Britney Spears meltdown. (I wish I were kidding!)
Based on all of this, (and this article) I am going to stop using CNN.com to get my news and switch to MSNBC.
CNN.com
When it was worth reading: When the only other option was TVWhy you must stop: It’s not news, it’s sensationalist stories that don’t constitute world-changing news. The site’s headlines, often with invitations to “watch this,” have long been fodder for Gawker. The front page looks like an “oddly enough” section. So either take that to its logical conclusion and read full-on trash, or switch to a real news site.
Replace with: MSNBC for better (not perfect) mainstream headlines.
For a laugh, I also highly recommend Fark-Politics!
January 7th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Awesome post…when more than half of the headlines at any given time would have been in the national enquirer 10 years ago, something has gone very wrong.
I’ve found some great reporting on BBC as well — about US issues like the subprime absurdities.
And Bush/Cheney almost got there gulf of tokin, the iran edition. didn’t help that five or so months ago half the dems voted to make that possible.
January 7th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I love listening the AM radio — in Eugene KRVM 1280 AM has really great public broadcasting all day. Starting with the Jefferson Exchange in the mornings for all the best news of the State of Jefferson (southern Oregon to Mendocino, including Eugene sometimes), the station also has Tavist Smalley, and runs many other news oriented shows the explore social, cultural, and political issues not usually covered on CNN.com.
I also regularly check www.blueoregon.com and www.loadedorygun.net for Oregon political news, and both link to blogs from every other state. Course, the Blogosphere is a different kind of news. And I’m a hopeless nerd.
You rock Cam!
Rose