This Isn't Your Older Brother's News

This post was inspired by a brief viewing of a panel discussion on The New Media” I’m not really sure because I came in to the programming late, but it was a forum that tied into the Republican Convention, in some way because it took place in St. Paul Minnesota. The one exchange that I caught was MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson having a professional spat, with the founder of the Huffington Post Arianna Huffington in which they battled on man made debate of Global Warming, in which Huffington used to throw darts at the recently named Republican party running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, who does not believe in the man- made argument for Global Warming. Somewhere in discussion, Tucker who is by all accounts a conservative commentator was calling for a neutral voice in the political news media, as all of the major networks have partisan voices as their heavies, as we are sacrificing neutrality for ratings. At that moment I thought to myself, you know what( John), not only is he right, but this is something that I have brought up and thought about many times.

The current American news media, mostly found on cable is rampant with opinions. I have no problem with these opinion based, editorial shows because they do represent a large number of the population (You may hate O’Reilly, but the guy kills in the ratings) the problem that I have is when these commentators are touted as the top “newsmen” news organization. Shows from Keith Olbermann, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, and Chris Matthews, have become the flagship programming for the respective cable news channels. The problem here is that all of these guys have a serious slant towards the right or the left of political views, Matthews, once thought to be “hard to figure out” let the cat out of the bag, when he said on air, that a Barrack Obama speech gave him “Chills up his leg…”. I always thought that political coverage especially on a major news network was supposed to be neutral, but that’s not the case in the least. Even the self proclaimed “Mr. Independent” ole’ Lou Dobbs on CNN has noticeable slant. So the question must be raised why is there no premier neutral “commentator” on television, Tucker said it right, its about ratings.

If the guy who has the highest rated show on your network by far, speaks to and captures a certain partisan audience, then it would be bad marketing wisdom, not to make this person the star of your network. So thus, the left winged Keith Olbermann has become the face of the network, along with Bill O’Reilly, a frequent target of Olbermann, has become the face of Fox News. So now each network touts both of these guys along with a few other “stars” as the moist trusted news people in the business. Really? Trusted by who. Oh let me guess they’re base, am I right? So you have”journalist” who absorbs the talking points for their aligned party, and just regurgitates it out to the public every night for their audience, with no objectivity, and we are supposed to trust them? Really? Having Keith Olbermann, or Sean Hannity as the face(s) and the political news epicenter of your network, is like HBO claiming that Bill Maher is the political center of the channel….oh wait he is, but HBO isn’t a news network, but I’m sure you get my point.
So would a perceived neutral political commentator work in today’s climate? I guess the only way to find out is to try and see.

Until next time, try not to neutral.