On the hatred of talking heads

I've recently come to hate talking heads quite a bit. Yes, I realize being a news anchor can be a thankless job -- receiving credit for bad news, while none for good -- but the manner in which the current television news media is run is simply deplorable.

No, I am not talking about small production local newscasts. Being part of a large market, I'm not used to seeing smaller budgeted local productions with an even smaller resource of news.

I'm talking about the national markets. Seriously, this is the "big leagues" of news. These are supposed to be the best. I'm not gonna even touch on ESPN, that's simply way too easy (unless you want your daily fill of arena football with sub-par presentations of soccer and hockey). This is about the bigguys -- CNN, MSNBC, FOXNews.

They simply have no shame in being objective. While I do understand that it is virtually impossible to be objective in one's reporting (even the manner in which facts are presented can skew one way or the other), at least try. I recently heard a newscaster sign off by saying how many days it has been since Bush declared victory in Iraq. Oberman signs off by trying (and I really do emphasize trying, cos it's just that bad) to channel Edward R Murrowes by saying "good night and good luck." FOXNews almost never addresses both sides of any single issue. Lou Dobbs is (or was, not entirely sure if its over) obsessed with the recent food poisoning outbreak with tomatoes. I mean, you watch the news to try and watch the news to become more informed about general happenings around the world, and there's always someone there trying to shove an agenda down your throat.

Yes, I know Bush is a failure as a president, but he's probably not as dumb as everyone thinks of him, I mean, it's hard to explain how a full fledged man idiot could win two terms of office without calling half the country stupid. And no, that's not a red/blue state issue, look at an election result map, I mean a real one. If you can find one that does percents, by county or state is fine, you'll see that half of all of the country voted for him, maybe a little bit more than half in the "red" states, and a little bit less than half in the "blue" states, but half the country voted for him -- twice.

Yes, I know when Edward R Murrowes was saying "good night and good luck" it meant something. But you know what, all of the media outlets, in particular Hollywood, were under attack by McCarthy at the time. His freedom of speech was very much in jeopardy. When Olberman does it, never is there a second his ability to say what he does (and he often continues without thinking) in danger of being hindered. He only is in jeopardy of losing his job from his employer. And I kinda hope he does, but I know if he does, he's gonna blame it on Bush and the Republicans somehow.

And FOXNews, seriously, when you guys are having a debate on an issue, it usually helps to have people of differing opinions and/or backgrounds to discuss the issue. I know the "conservative" view (if you actually believe in the liberal/conservative split) is underrepresented by the other networks usually, but compensating doesn't help. It actually just makes it seem ameteurish. And when separate views are shown, it usually quickly escalates to a shouting match. Can't this be solved through logical discourse? I think it just shows neither side knows what the hell they're talking about so they mask it by being loud.

Being the loudest does not make you the rightest. And sometimes the squeaky wheel doesn't get the grease; sometimes the squeaky wheel gets chucked and replaced by a shiny new one.

-Knuttel