A lot has happened in our country over the past few months. Biden was elected. Trump whined. A bunch of brainwashed thugs tried to storm the capitol, to no avail. And I feel that I have undergone a chance as well. Since the election, I have watched a ton of CNN. Now why CNN? Well, I tend to think of myself as a left leaning moderate. And I fine FOX News and MSNBC to be the seperate poles of the political spectrum. While CNN to me fits perfectly. It is left leaning, but not as lefty as MSNBC. So after watching CNN for a while, I have come to several conclusions, most of which are not surprising to me.
1. They move the goalposts alot. To me this is apparent when talking about the senate runoffs in Georgia that Biden won. They seemingly put all importance on these runoffs that if the Dems won, Biden's agenda would be pushed through. They won. And the goalpost moving begain. They neglected to mention anything about filibusters or Dems that might not go along the party line or even that the Senate is split directly down the middle. They waited until after the Democrats had won the Senate to even bring any of these things up. That leads to point #3, which I will get to. but first...
2. It's repetitive as hell. Now being a 24 hour news channel, one would expect this to be true. Yet, I was taken aback at how repetitive it has proven to be. It's basically Trump and COVID. That's it. Any angles of or related to Trump and COVID. Now I get that they are the biggest topics ofn the day, but people do need a break from that. In fact, I remember today that I was listening to it and they brought a tornado in Alabama and brought on their meteorologist. And I thought "What the heck does this guy do there?" It was the first time I was aware CNN had a meteorologist to begin with. The lack of variety in the news they cover is very telling, especially for a network that has 24 hours to fill of news. Back in the day you had Showbiz reports and Larry King (RIP) interviewing people. That's variety. Now it's just talking heads. 24-7 it seems. Talking about the same things. And having the same slant on those things. Which is bring me to the last point.....
3. Negativity sells. Yep, the old adage "If it bleeds, it leads" still holds true today, especially to cable networks losing out to social media for instantaneous news coverage. And the bad thing is that once these reports are exposed into the echo chamber that is social media, they are blasted and enhanced to points where people will totally either buy into them or choose to try and ignore them altoegher. I am kind of towards the back end of that equation, To me, CNN has just become white noise in the background. Fred Rogers famously said "Look for the Helpers" in relation to news coverage of disasters, and while sometimes CNN brings on these people and praises their work, they are then usually bombarded with negative questions. To me, not enough was made of the fact that while Trump tried to overturn the election through sometimes nefarious means, democracy was bloodied and bruised but it survived. Instead they want to focus on the deep divisions in the country. Hell they have a special coming up with the subtitle, and I am quoting "Why We Hate Each Other". It's just too much depression and negativity to be really taken seriously. And they will present it 24-7 with amny different angles in order to get the numbers. Which is apparently what news has become these days. Very sad indeed.
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