Every morning (some earlier than others) I hop on Google Reader and spend about an hour or so scrolling and scrolling through headlines from various news sources, trying to catch up on what's happened in the world since I went to bed and finding a topic to write about here at CF. After moving through my Reader articles, I usually head over to The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Economist, etc. and check in with each of those publications to get an idea of what everyone's talking about. The problem is, I can find out what they're talking about within five minutes- because they're all talking about the same thing in exactly the same way.
Sure, it's important that Rand Paul said he didn't think the Civil Rights Act should have allowed the federal government to tell private business owners what to do; sure it's important that BP admits that its original estimates of the size of the spill were too low; and no, it's not important that Megan Fox was fired from the Transformers 3 set. But why is every journalist just saying the same thing about the same things?
Just the other day I read a piece by James Fallows on Google's attempt to reinvigorate the newspaper business and what real journalism will look like in the future as it integrates more and more with constantly-updating technology. I think the internet and its many platforms offers an amazing ability for people to get news and commentary from different sources quickly and efficiently and, as news sources become more polarized, the ability to consume a lot of different media allows the average person to see the full picture. However, there have got to be more stories going on in the world every day than the few we're constantly inundated with.
At CF, I sometimes write about the stories everyone else is talking about and I sometimes steer in another direction. However, every time I write, I try to bring a different perspective to a piece, attempting to dissect an issue in a logical manner and cut through the talking points of all the different sides. To do so, I depend on journalists to give me the facts and commentators to give me a fresh viewpoint. Maybe I'm expecting too much from the media, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling that with thousands of news sites and 24-hr. news networks galore, I should be getting a wider look at the world than the one with which I'm presented.
Sure, it's important that Rand Paul said he didn't think the Civil Rights Act should have allowed the federal government to tell private business owners what to do; sure it's important that BP admits that its original estimates of the size of the spill were too low; and no, it's not important that Megan Fox was fired from the Transformers 3 set. But why is every journalist just saying the same thing about the same things?
Just the other day I read a piece by James Fallows on Google's attempt to reinvigorate the newspaper business and what real journalism will look like in the future as it integrates more and more with constantly-updating technology. I think the internet and its many platforms offers an amazing ability for people to get news and commentary from different sources quickly and efficiently and, as news sources become more polarized, the ability to consume a lot of different media allows the average person to see the full picture. However, there have got to be more stories going on in the world every day than the few we're constantly inundated with.
At CF, I sometimes write about the stories everyone else is talking about and I sometimes steer in another direction. However, every time I write, I try to bring a different perspective to a piece, attempting to dissect an issue in a logical manner and cut through the talking points of all the different sides. To do so, I depend on journalists to give me the facts and commentators to give me a fresh viewpoint. Maybe I'm expecting too much from the media, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling that with thousands of news sites and 24-hr. news networks galore, I should be getting a wider look at the world than the one with which I'm presented.
No comments:
Post a Comment