Fan of Fox News?
Come on!
Oh, you prefer MSNBC?
Just as bad.
There, Jon Stewart had it right during his Rally to Restore Sanity.
Cable news is broken, and as Americans have increasingly turned to the television for their news, television has increasingly turned towards punditry.
What has resulted is a nation whose buttons are pushed by biased news programs, that feels as though it has nowhere to turn for legitimate, trustworthy coverage.
Cable television can bring vampires, mobsters, dancing celebrities and Shamwows into your living room, but it can’t bring knowledge into your head
Yes, cable news can be biased; yes, it can mislead—some would even say purposely—and yes, it often boils down to punditry and opinion at best.
But cable news is not the only culprit in the grand theft of America’s political awareness and understanding.
Perhaps the American people are at fault to some extent too.
We like things quick and easy.
We like our food fast, our internet broadband and our beer distributors drive-through.
Who can blame us—we Allegheny students barely have time to scarf down a McKinley’s burrito between classes and clubs and comping, let alone spend hours picking out beer or informing ourselves politically.
But we have become complacent in our own deception.
It’s not just the job of the media to inform us, its our duty to ourselves to seek out information.
It’s time for us to stop blaming cable news for national ignorance because, let’s face it, cable news isn’t going to change.
We’re the ones that have to change.
You’re on the right track—you picked up a newspaper.
Make sure you’re seeking out as many different sources as you can for your news, and that the articles you read aren’t preaching to the choir.
Take an active interest in your own education.
Then perhaps the Big Bad Media won’t seem like such a boogeyman anymore.