Fearmonger News
Why, indeed, is television news so dreadful? To the extent it was ever a habit with me, I shook the monkey off a couple of years before the Cronk retired, and when I look in now and again (as during the Late Unpleasantness in the Gulf, for example) I'm startled at just how low TV news has sunk. Wouldn't you say that the commercial nature of the beast accounts for much of this? Given that the pitchmen are breaking in every five to seven minutes, it may be that an audience already brought to an elevated pitch of anxiety will be more receptive to new SUV/beer/feminine hygeine product or whatever else is being offered up for sale to fill the void, and that the newscasts are of set purpose delivering the rubes in that state of agitated receptivity. NPR's critics will claim it has its own biases, its own agendas, but at least they're not trying to sell us anything.
cordially,
