Glenn Beck is NOT Front Page News

I’ve long been a current-events junkie. This is an addiction that for many years was very easily and efficiently maintained by staying up on the news through a couple of reliable sources, such as  through the  online versions of The LA Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal as well as National Public Radio. My main areas of interest are world events, entertainment, business, and Washington politics, pretty much in that order.  I don’t watch cable news or local news, but, oddly enough, I know a great deal about what’s being reported on television, primarily because of online sites such as Media Matters, Think Progess, and The Huffington Post to name a few.

While this has given me a great deal more insight and understanding as to why so many people are ill-informed and/or misinformed, it has given me a rash as well.

In the old days I was blissfully unaware of the positions held by pseudo-journalistic personalities such as Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Beck, and Scarborough, and I was also largely oblivious of those I might tend more to agree with like Olbermann, Maddow, Cooper, or Brown.  For me, getting my news fix had nothing to do with the people presenting the news except in terms of a particular reporter’s expertise (such as NPR’s Cokie Roberts reporting on the Supreme Court).

There was a time when if someone told me something crazy like they “don’t trust the United States Census”  I would have fallen slack-jawed and silent with no ability to comprehend how anyone could have come up with the strange idea that the US Census could be something to be feared. In this case in particular, the person’s census statistics haven’t changed in any significant way since the last census 10 years ago, so their answers on the current census would be largely the same. Even so, the Census had somehow become something to be feared. Now that my awareness has been expanded to include television news, I no longer wonder how a person gets such a harebrained idea, because after being indoctrinated in the ways of disinformational media the answer is obvious. “You read Drudge or watch Fox News on a regular basis, don’t you?”

So while I appreciate that I no longer wonder about such things, I find myself in a constant state of perturbation over the unbelievable level of intentionally misleading “news” with which people of limited intelligence are bombarded every day. So do I thank the aggregators and online watchdogs for keeping me informed about what the dark side is up to (known thine enemy and all that) or blame them for my inability to resist watching Glenn Beck’s “education” rally or Ann Coulter’s latest hate-strewn interview? Seriously, those  two make me want to hurl my PC through the window, but I can’t stop myself from watching them, and just as I start to calm down, them what would keep me informed heat up another spoon of the stuff for me to mainline.

I know I’m not alone in this. I can tell from the comment sections of those same infuriating posts that this is wearing many of us down. The irony is that even as  I complain about people like Beck and Coulter getting far too much airtime, positing that if they weren’t given so much attention they wouldn’t be able to sway the sheep so easily, online news outlets are giving them more attention, and I, in turn, am giving them MY attention. And it doesn’t stop there. I occasionally am so outraged that I forward the link to my friends and colleagues, giving those same people who should be ignored even more attention!

I understand that we must remain vigilant against intolerance, fear, hate, and prejudice. I am thankful that I know what the real “evildoers” look like and that I know what they have to say, however, I have long been aware of the Ku Klux Klan and I don’t need to see interminable video of their cross-burning  events to maintain that awareness. I further understand that it’s my responsibility to filter what I allow in to my perception on a daily basis, but when The Huffington Post chooses to put headlines like: “Commandant Beck Not Joking Anymore”  on the front page, I find it easier to  look away from a bad car crash on the highway.

I know there’s a great deal of interest in this sort of thing just judging from the sheer number of comments such a post will garner, but it bothers me that news sources I’m addicted to which I expect to maintain their poise and position above the fray, sometimes fall victim to sensationalizing a story with its headlines, or worse, running a piece merely because of its outrageousness (such as anything Rush Limbaugh has to say).

I’m not in any way suggesting content be eliminated, but just as in the old days of newsprint journalism, certain stories deserve Page 1 status and others belong just before the Sports Section. For legitimate news, this continues to be a better rule of thumb than the TV news mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 08:14 and is filed under Blogroll, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.