The news we get, especially news comes from the large 24-hour network television stations, has become less and less about news and more and more about entertainment.
In an effort to fill the complete 24 hours of the day, the news has become diluted with less substantial pieces, and the news channels have traded journalism for something akin to reality TV. While this is a problem that is seen mostly in television, it is one that affects all branches of our news as print and electronic media try to compete against their television counterpart.
News agencies have started creating controversy where there should be none. When they cannot create their own controversies, they quickly find someone who is willing to do it for them. At the best, these so-called controversies are a waste of time as they supplant more important news, and at the worst they distract from or entirely destroy rational debate. In creating these controversies, it is often a requirement to raise one side up to a more believable level no matter how unreasonable the person's position is.
As a prime example, Orly Taitz, one of the leaders of the right-wing movement known colloquially as the "birther movement," has gotten hours upon hours of air time - and not just on the right-leaning news stations where she might find the most sympathy for her views. For those of you who don't know this woman, she has claimed that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., making him an illegitimate president.
She claims all this despite the fact that Obama presented a birth certificate during the elections and produced two separate newspapers announcing his birth in Hawaii in 1961. She has tried so hard to grasp at straws that she has used obviously forged evidence to try to prove her theories. While Taitz's time in the sun has begun to recede, she stands as a testament to the lack of intellectual discretion of our media.
To make matters worse, we have entire stations devoted to telling us exactly what we want to hear. We watch them in order to stoke the fires of our passions that we think we want stoked. Many people watch these heavily biased stations not just because they want news, but also to validate their fears and hopes. The people who rely solely on these news outlets are rubes, suckers and fools.
By relying too strongly on a single source, people become beholden to that source. In exchange for having our egos stroked, we find it too easy to give up what we need the most: truth. We choose to forget that, when we tune into partisan blowhards, we risk - and often succeed - in giving up real news for entertainment.
The result of this form of news is that we have partisan commentators who are often not delineated from actual news anchors and journalists, whose opinions are often intermixed with or sometimes presented as the news in confusing ways. In evaluating the comments of these people and their guests, we cannot afford to give them the same credence that we would give to a true journalist.
In other words, to find the truth it is not simply a matter of averaging together different reports as some might have you believe. Some sources are just too unbelievable to even accept as possible. Fortunately, it can be as easy as looking at the bias of a source and comparing it to other non-biased sources.
Opinions and persuasive debate are an important part of an open society; however, it is important that we take note of when opinion starts and the news stops. Fortunately, in many newspapers, this delineation is clear and pieces such as this column and many like it are in a clearly marked "opinions section," although in other forms of media it may not be so easy. Sometimes opinion becomes all that an agency offers. Such agencies can be dangerous.
While an unbiased source is always best, when one is unavailable it is important not to consume news from only one kind of bias. Sometimes the best thing we can do to educate ourselves is to avail ourselves of the news that we like least.