I know for a fact that I am not the only person that finds mainstream 24-hour news stations disturbing. I brought this up once to someone, who replied to my statement that this trend is harmful to the national current events dialogue by saying: "It's not news, it's just entertainment."
I didn't have a rebuttal to this at the time. Or maybe I did, but I didn't feel like getting into this sort of argument with a person I had just met seconds ago. But here is my current rebuttal: watching clowns riding unicycles is entertainment. But, if someone watches these clowns for an hour on TV, they don't come away thinking: "Wow, I really understand what's going on in the world now."
If you watch FOX News and are impressionable, this is exactly what happens. You come away believing that Barack Obama went to a Muslim school, or that we should care about Jessica Simpson or some crazy woman that is dragging her daughter behind a motorboat in the Florida Keys, or that Sarah Palin is the greatest thing to happen to America since Friends went off the air.
There is something harmful in spouting rumors and half-truths to the American Viewing Public, especially when your demographic is the least educated, least informed, most impressionable segment of America. This is yet another way that an unchecked free market fails this country.
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