Talking Over News

My brother brought this topic up....Tom Brokaw and the biased nature of news, and it deserves a bit of pondering and consideration.

As a kid growing up in rural Alabama in 1975, my sources for news was limited to roughly fourteen things: (1) CBS, (2) NBC, (3) ABC, (4) the AP folks via local radio, (5) two regional newspapers (Florence, Birmingham), (6) the Nashville paper, (7) Grit, (8) some farm newspaper that my dad subscribed to, (9) Paul Harvey news and commentary (more commentary than news itself), (10) Time magazine, (11) copies of National Geographic that a relative would drop off, (12) Argosy magazine (ending in 1978), (13) PBS with a weekly political chat show (I might have watched that once a year), and finally (14) US News and World Report (what my grandfather often quoted out of for political dialog and everything you needed to know and could read in sixty minutes). 

At some later point (after I'd left home), my dad added some Mennonite paper (mostly lacking news but giving you good advice on weather predictions for the fall, baking recipes, wagon accidents, and travels of various Mennonites). 

Today?  There's probably over 300 sources of daily news that I read through on a daily basis.  Some based out of the UK, and Germany.  I'll even occasionally watch RT (the Putin network), and catch an hour per week of France-24 (in English). 

The blunt truth is that there are now at least ten different variations on just about every single story.  Some folks will tell you a 40-line story, which has only three simple facts built into it.  CNN can spend an entire hour with four experts telling you about Russian collusion, as if it was a wild bear in your basement and about to get through the basement door (any minute now).

Some folks (well, maybe not my brother) can name all members of the Kardashian family, and give you a four-line description on their status for this week. 

Some of the networks will bring on various Senators for a Sunday chat, and do their best to let the marginally intelligent guy get by with answers that don't seem to say much. 

All of this just makes me wonder....have we turned the news into entertainment?