The No-News News

The news on television can best be described as mindless drivel. The same stories recycled over and over again, with a few "updates" to keep the news fresh, with little content that redeems from the depths of foolish idiocy that it drinks deeply from. It rarely goes into anything serious, and when it does, it cheapens and dumbs it down into fluff. God forbid interrupting a story about cheap fashions with a newsworthy event like solidiers dying in Iraq, defending America from "the evil terrorist network." I think it is reflective of American society and how it could care less about what happens in the world today, let alone events from their backyard, and more concerned about what happened on their favorite TV show or what happened to their favorite celebrity.

The news begins with an early morning local news show. This show will last from 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM, and will repeat the same 30 minute chunk of news. If anything "new" happens, they will devote additional time telling those watching the news that "nothing new has happened since the last update" which was about two minutes ago. Ah, catering to the needs of "busy" Americans who bring their cellphones to movie theaters.

Then you have your national morning show, which interestingly enough, spends 30 minutes on actual news like national and world events, and spends the other hour and a half on fluff. You wouldn't want to spend the whole two hours of a morning news show with actual news. That would bore the hell out of Americans. No, you want to talk about celebrities, fashions, and other "important" things. You might learn that "diet and exercise is the best way to lose weight." Holy crap, like that took how much money and time to figure that one out? Did you also know that eating bread, grilled food, foods with food coloring, certain vegetables, foods with low carbs, high carbs, low fat, high fat, using shampoo, hairspray, and nearly everything else might be bad for you and you could possibly die? That and the evil terrorists might attack your no-name town with biological weapons? See? It's all mindless drivel that people will consume and store as "fact" without thinking about the preposterousness of it all. The next day, people don't eat certain things, do certain things, etc. just because it was on the news. Yet, people are still fat, still sick, still in the same position as they were before. Just more gullible. And it all came from the news, so it must be true.
You can actually learn what dresses that celebrities wore to the Oscars, what stores to get the best bargains, and you can also listen to a concert from a multi-platinum recording artist with little singing talent(most of the times, none at all), but is good looking and fits the sorely lacking consumer taste of the average American. Which, by most accounts, is none. Interestingly enough, Americans will buy this and buy that because everyone else has it and it must be true because it was mentioned in...guess where...the NEWS! As long as the record company can cash in with the sheep mentality of popular culture, they'll crank out whatever pisspoor hack America wants.

Then comes the news at noon. Just a rehash of the early show news, but with updates like the recent murder victim is still dead and the police have no suspect, that the injured people are still injured, and that the house burned down in the fire is still burned down. Utterly mindless drivel made to be comprehended by people with attention spans of a six-year old who ate a bag of Cocoa Puffs. After all, you might be an adult with adult ADD and not even know it according to the news, but you still can recite perfectly what happened in a two hour long movie without forgetting a single detail and that takes a whole lot of concentration.

The 5:00 PM news is a rehash of the news at noon, but with some more updates that show the dead guy is still dead, there are no suspects in the latest crime, and the weather forecast is still the same, but with some minor changes. You might get some new stories of interest, but it's unlikely.

At 5:30 PM, is the national news on CBS, NBC, and ABC. They actually do the news, but it is diluted with personal interest stories and other stuff that might qualify as news, but is more scare stories than anything else. This includes stories like "You might get this horrible disease if you do this" or "You could have your ID stolen by a hacker, but you probably can't operate a computer" or "The government wasted your money on an amazing stupid thing, but you really don't care what happens anyways since you are apathetic to care." And people will listen and think of it as true. Then they will not care after a while.

You then have the 6:00 PM news. It is the 5:00 PM, but different. Well, not that much.

The last news show of the day is the 10:00 PM news. This is the rehash of the 6:00 PM news, but with a sleazy, gutter-sucking "investigative" news story like child molesters online or scum landlords. After all, Americans don't care about the news, but if it sounds like a Jerry Springer story, then it's interesting. You gotta get the people to "watch" the news during sweeps, cause ratings count. Great. The news is not about reporting the news, but to get people to watch, just like everything else. How do I know? I saw it on the news.

Next up, a rant on mindless American culture and it's foolish obsession with celebrities.

That's all for now.