Real News

Ted Turner, General Electric, Rupert Murdock, The Walt Disney Company, Bill Gates, Viacom, these are the people and corporations controlling the news you receive every day. These are the people whose opinions dictate the level of attention a certain story will or will not get. Based on liberal, moderate, or conservative idea's these people decide how they want their news stations and papers to report the news.

I guess it's an ok system if every individual understands that concept of biased control and uses each station equally to try and balance the coverage to find a happy medium. But who actually does that besides me and a few other dedicated individuals? Most people don't even watch the entire news cycle from the station they choose, just the commercials, the taking points and the repeated loop of the same 3 news stories over and over all day long.

How are we to be an informed and concerned citizenry without actually being given the true information we need to make up our decisions properly? If we are being bombarded with biased news such as Sean Hannity labeling Barack Obama a socialist or Keith Olberman calling Sarah Palin out on unverified claims of not knowing that Africa was a continent, how are we to actually focus on the real issues at hand?

If ABC decides that the civil war raging in the Congo isn't worth covering, but Barney the White House Dog biting a reporter is worth their time, how are we to know what is going on around the world? Is CNN interviews Mitt Romney for a half an hour and Ron Paul for 3 minutes how are we to get any real perception of who we want to run our country?

If most people don't even watch the "news" that is most prevalent in our western culture, and get their information from second hand sources who are just barely paying attention to what is going on around them, that makes us a society of completely uninterested, unconcerned, uneducated, buffoons. This is not a generalization, I am not offering up that everyone is like what I just stated. However the sad truth is that MANY, MANNNYYY people are. They get their news about the election from chain e-mails and neighbors who get their information from Bill O'Reilly or Chris Matthews, leaving everyone completely in the dark.

Don't get me wrong, all the pundits I have named thus far are incredible at what they do, and that is rallying the base, "reporting" on certain daily events, and entertaining their audience. However they do not report the news, they are not real reporters, they just watch the news as it comes in and give their opinions. Like I already stated though, that news that is coming in to them to discuss is strictly limited to what their parent corporations want them to report on.

So these pundits are being fed the news to discuss in front of camera in order for the America people to feel a semblance of understanding of what is going on around them. The sad part to me is that I truly believe they hire certain pundits knowing that they won't question their position, they don't want to be real reporters, they just want to be in front of the camera. They don't care if what they are reporting is hear say or completely false, they just word it in a way that they can't be blamed for the accusations.

Read a book, search the internet, vary and limit your corporate news intake, subscribe to private, uncontrolled, YouTube news stations, talk to experts, and when all of that comes together to the point of true understanding, create or report the news yourself. This world is much larger than the 2008 Presidential Election, or the Olympics, or a 100 MPH car chase. There is alot more out there to learn about if you truly want to be an informed and concerned citizen of your country and your world.