News You Cannot Depend On

Wow, what a week. We have lived through the Scott Brown thunderbolt, the POTUS State of the Union Address and the Conan/Jay Leno debacle. This has kept the pundits very busy. Way too busy.

I used to love the news. I can remember when I was young and the news came on with Walter Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley, and we sat quiet and transfixed in front of our TV. No nonsense, just-the-facts news. It was deliberate, sober and informative. We trusted the news. It was a big part of our daily lives. We admired it.

Fast forward to today. There is way too much news. News everywhere we turn. There is comedy acting like news that is better than the real news. There is real news that looks and acts like a comedy sketch. There are newscasters in short, tight skirts looking like a cheap prom date. There are guys who tell us their opinion, but act like it is real news. The list goes on and on.

So, who can we trust? Where can I actually find unbiased, factual news? Hard to really know. And that is sad.

Jon Stewart, who lampoons "real" news nightly on his 'fake' news program, recently had a show featuring clips from different news organizations reacting to the State of the Union address. One station could not say anything nice about it, another one all but gushed over it. It was a funny show, but at the end they showed a clip of Chris Matthews saying, "You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour." Geesh.....Weird. Could you imagine saying anything so disrespectful to anyone, even a stranger? Yet, he said that about the President. And he is still on TV allowed to jabber on because ratings trump everything.

So, the news is biased and weird and sometimes pure nonsense and we cannot trust most of it. Good thing we are smart enough to weed through the garbage and at least gather some insight on what is really happening in our world.

Small wonder the most watched show in America is American Idol.

Sad, but true.

I miss you, Walter Cronkite. You were a gentleman and a prince.