News Entertainment: The Latest Chapter of Greed and Stupidity

By Daniel Miessler on July 10th, 2009: Tagged as America | Culture

foxporn

Sometime within the last couple months I’ve realized that CNN and Fox (and most cable news channels) have become news entertainment.

The reason for this is the increasing lack of education, and general sophistication, of the American TV-viewing population. Most Americans don’t want to think or be challenged; they want to be dazzled. And this translates to ratings being higher for content that provides that.

So when a cable news show has a story about Britney’s boobs, and the ratings go crazy, the people at the cable network take notice. Perhaps there’s a slight sting among the real journalists who work there as they make the move to more soft-core porn and other sensationalist content, but it’s the business people that make the decisions.

Common Components

I see a theme here, and it’s the same with the sub-prime mortgage crisis, or the lottery, or with exorbitant credit card fees for those with poor credit. There are two primary ingredients for all of these things:

  1. Greed
  2. Stupidity

As a society if you fail in both of these areas you quickly move toward becoming a third-world country. If you have greed but no stupidity the greedy will be called out, ostracized, and will die off. If you have stupidity with no greed, you get a paternal hand to guide you back on your feed.

But when you have both the greed feeds off the stupidity. The more stupidity you have, the more the greedy at the top take advantage of it for profit. There are few things with more money-making potential than a mass of millions of people who’ll believe anything you tell them.

And that’s why Fox news anchor women look like porn stars. We as a nation are too stupid to reject the lack of content being presented by news today, and we consume the garbage that’s being fed to us. So we’ll still see “politics” in the headers of cable news, but the stories will have headlines like:

Sex Secrets of a Congressman’s Mistress!

…and people will watch.

Real News

Real news won’t go away, it’ll just be hidden on the Internet and away from TV viewers who would just get confused by it–and probably a bit threatened. I say “hidden” on the Internet, but what I really mean is hidden from the mainstream–kind of like books in the library. ::

Links

[ Fox News Porn | foxnewsporn.com ]

  • cooperati

    I was just talking about this with another person yesterday. It's important, in one sense, to keep an eye on what's on your TV. Because the cable companies keep track of what you watch, you are, in a sense, empowered to cast your vote on what the programming is.

    I told him about how we were just inundated with Michael Jackson material, moreso that people have a practical use for, or in a way was healthy for any attention span. My answer, “Change the freaking channel.” It sends a clear message that “Hey, I don't like that. In fact, what I'm going to change the channel to is what I prefer to what's on.”

    But, I know what you mean. Some of the fresh faces, Barbies, aren't any different than what you wake up to on the local networks. It's been a longtime theme, just not for the major networks. I'm used to seeing Robin Meade on headline news and Megan Kelly on Fox, though they don't necessarily present the same role.

    And, then, this might have an effect on the credibility of the old guard personalities. People definitely aren't going to take the information, and opinions, from Blitzer or O'Reilly in a different way.

    -=T=-

  • CarlM

    I think you're being a little over dramatic, but what you're talking about is not at all new. During the OJ trial, approximately half the news on the nightly network news EVERY FREAKING DAY was about the trial. Of course it was only news when the verdict came in. After that trial, I took note of how much of the nightly news was news. (about 7 minutes).

    If you watched only TV news, you'd think that the vast majority of murder victims were white females under 25 years old. (NOT a new phenomenon.)

    When CNN started it was intended to deliver the news in a way not unlike the network news, but updated more frequently and always available. Then they thought that “programming” might bring in more viewers. Eventually there was a lot of the programming crap and CNN Headline News was created (a sort of Classic CNN). The Weather Channel once had “local on the 8's” every hour. Now even THEY have “programming” that interferes with their mission (sorry . had to vent).

    Anyway, TV is about ratings … nothing else. This isn't new.

  • http://danielmiessler.com/ Daniel Miessler

    I would say you're wring there. It is new. Remember the nightly news
    with Tom Brokaw? Or Kronkite. Or Rather?

    Ok, now that you have that image in your mind, take some modern fox
    news programming and ask if it'd be allowed on their programs.

    No, it wouldn't. Because the people would cry that this wasn't news.

    But the ratings wars were still raging at that time, so the only thing
    that has changed is the sophistication of the audience.

  • CarlM

    It has gotten worse, but it was Tom Brokaw's program that had (no more
    than) 7 minutes of news.

    Carl

  • http://www.simonsarris.com simonsarris

    There's still BBC on the TV and NPR (BBC news being reported) on the radio, as far as non-internet options go

  • http://www.simonsarris.com simonsarris

    There's still BBC on the TV and NPR (BBC news being reported) on the radio, as far as non-internet options go

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