My Rant today comes on the heels of a blockbuster news story out of Montreal that actually had me stay up later than I wanted to just so I could hear it. A newspaper in Montreal released a tidbit of information to a bunch of different media outlets saying that they had a news story that was running tomorrow (Friday Feb 20th) that would rock Montreal and the Canadiens organization.
Well it turns out that after having the entire internet and press corp running with wild accusations that it was nothing more than a couple players were acquainted with a guy arrested in a sweep of organized crime a week ago. The charges have been laid against said players and there is no proof they did anything illegal.
This got me thinking about several news outlets and the way they report stories. Everything in today's news is sensationalized and very tabloid orientated due to the fact that the more viewers/readers they get the more advertisers they get and the more money they ultimately make. This to me is a major problem, the news is supposed to be unbiased and based on facts so that people become informed and not about making the most money. When their focus changes from just reporting the news to sensationalizing it, I think they start to lose credibility and perhaps even cause the world to ignore real problems because they are constantly reporting that the sky is falling.
How do we end this? I really don't know. The problem is if you manage it by the government or just let one body fund the media they will control the content which is no better. Perhaps we must take it as a civilized world to not buy or watch news programs that we know are becoming to tabloidish and hope that real news organizations (if there are any left) survive and get us the real news and not the fake Lochness monster, alien babies, and stars screwing everything is site stories.
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