The decline of quality news reporting in America
A few days back as I was doing my usual rounds on the web, checking the scores from the night before and reading the news, I came across something that startled me on CNN.com’s homepage. What was it? Live updates of Britney Spear’s child custody hearing taking place in California. Is this what America is coming to? Since when has Britney Spear’s ongoing inability to live a normal life become “headline” news for CNN? I find it absolutely ridiculous that one of the more reputable news networks we have in America would stoop so low as to give people hourly updates on whether or not Britney Spears has learned that good parenting does not include driving on the freeway with an unbuckled child on your lap. The fact that CNN is now reporting gossip news only goes to show what people in America think are important. The average person does not care about the Republican and Democratic primaries taking place right now as much as they care about what Paris Hilton ate for lunch. I think that reputable news sources such as CNN should hold themselves to higher standards and report actual news instead of allowing petty celebrity gossip to take up space on their sites.
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January 23rd, 2008 at 6:55 pm
As a pro-blogger I am constantly doing news roundups for various clients. It is stunning to me how many inaccuracies there are when you start comparing news stories on the same subject.
Client confidentiality prevents me giving the specifics, but last week I was going through an article on Newsweek’s site and discovered that the writer has put the number 70 trillion where everybody else had it listed as 70 billion. I emailed them about it and never got any response, although the number was corrected a few short hours later.
Go figure.