Fit to Print?

Would somebody please explain exactly why in the name of Poor Richard's Almanac the cable news shills seem to be having so much trouble staying on-topic and up-to-date? What exactly is it that has convinced them to stop doing their bloody jobs and engage in what can, at best be described as "infotainment" and at worst as malicious, partisan, disinformative propagandizing? Why have I suddenly taken asking tortuously long, complex questions in the form of run-on sentences? Get the full story, and weather, at 6.

Or now, maybe.

Frankly its insulting, but lately the cable news types seem to be having trouble telling us useful and important things, instead focusing on photogenic celebrity gossip and supposed protocol gaffs. When they do finally get on page again, they seem to be A: late, B: repetitive and C: more concerned with providing "analysis" than useful, hard facts. Worse, the excuses they give are mealy mouthed, disingenuous and obviously self-serving, "Well, this is what people want to hear about. We're just trying to run a business."

Earlier today, whilst scanning the extra-terrestrial waves I caught a discussion between the dependable Joe Mathieu and MediaMatters' Karl Frisch. Short version? Not only are these buggers not covering the actual news (like what happened at the G20 conference and the NATO summit) but they aren't even getting the facts of what they are covering right. For one thing, there is no "protocol" against touching the Queen and secondly, she specifically asked for the iPod the Obama's gave her. Apparently hers was an older, no-video model.

The conflation of information and entertainment has been underway for some time and has begun to really become visible as the previous multitude of media outlets have been increasingly centralized under the sway of a half-dozen or so corporate owners. Why? Because corporations exist purely to generate a profit and so they direct the media operations they own to engage in whatever practices generate the most profit; this primarily manifests itself as sensationalism and yellow journalism.