Fox News and the De-Evolution of Man

Seriously, I'm not picking on Fox in particular, I'm an equal opportunity hater of contemporary news broadcast organizations. It seems as though all "news" today is designed to pander to the lowest common denominator in all of us. The current level of political and social discourse in this country is shameful. This is due, I believe, in large part, to the aggressive and polarizing nature of the news. The era of non-partisan news reporting is officially over. You cannot turn on ANY new broadcast without getting stories that are colored by the opinions of the person (or dare I say, the network) doing the reporting. The news today is about ratings, about subjective truth told by people that are so far to the right or left that the actual reporting has become a farce. It is as though the bloggers have risen up and taken over the world. The news is supposed to have one function and one function only, to report facts. Those facts are then supposed to be free to be interpreted by the public. But when an anchor or a reporter tells you what THEY think about the facts as THEY have presented them, when they let their own opinions shape how they report the facts, they do themselves and the public at large a great disservice. Depending on what channel you watch, you probably either believe that the President of the United States either walks on water or is the anti-christ. Each side views his acts and policies based on what they want to see, rather than what is actually there. The only thing this accomplishes is to incite one side against the other, leaving no room for compromise. Don't feel this way? How about we look at the current state of politics in the nation. I believe that the politicians have merely taken their cue from the broadcast networks. There is NO bipartisanship, no compromise. All republicans vote the party line, as do all the democrats. The legislative process has come to a screeching halt, and that appears to be exactly where WE want it. WE, the public, have become so polarized that we refuse to give an inch to the other side, even if it comes at the cost of getting nothing done at all. Don't blame it all on the networks, WE are the ones who truly dictate what we want to see on the news. We want the drama, crave it, and the networks have done us and injustice by giving it to us.

Shame on us all for demanding that the networks give us our Jerry Springer-like theatrics, and shame on them for giving us exactly what we want.