Annie, of the “Annie Asks You” Blog, posted this essay today and I’m reblogging it. I think too many people want sensationalism and entertainment over sound government. Biden just isn’t as newsworthy as Trump because he’s too ordinary–not bigger than real life. Reality acting has become more salable than reality, selling newspapers more important than selling the truth. Rupert Murdoch has done more to tear down legitimate news reporting, both in Britain and the U.S. and to push news as an entertainment commodity than anyone I can think of. I’m afraid the future of our world has been sold to the highest bidders and they are not acting in our best interest. I hope you read Annie’s essay and respond with your own thoughts.
That’s the troubling charge that longtime Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank made in his December 3rd column. (I haven’t linked to the essay because it’s behind a firewall.)
His observations meshed with my own perceptions about why President Biden’s poll numbers fail to reflect his highly productive first year. (Yes; rising inflation is a big concern—worldwide, I might add. And though Biden’s taken steps to control it, I understand that the President “owns” the issue, and people will respond accordingly, despite other very promising signs of economic health.)
Milbank backed up his assertions with data. Here are key passages.
“Artificial intelligence can now measure the negativity with precision. At my request, Forge.ai, a data analytics unit of the information company FiscalNote, combed through more than 200,000 articles — tens of millions of words — from 65 news websites (newspapers, network and cable news, political publications, news wires…
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lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
I completely agree with you, it bothers me a lot, but I must restrain myself at times. A streaker running across the football field nude will make all the papers and news outlets, and a certain element in the stands will be cheering him on. (all he did was show us what we did not want to see but made the news~! But if he is just walking fully clothed to his seat, no one notices him. Trump learned this long ago as a young person and practices it now. Also, there are only a few news “programs” and lots of news “shows”, the problem again is that the news shows get the most watchers, and sadly the great news people who gather the news, digest it and give us an unbiased report are getting less every day. They are retiring every day due to a loss in popularity.
I limit myself to the best of news journals and stay away from the talking heads on such as CNN reading their teleprompters of a canned opinion of what their business requires.
The average American is very lazy and wants others to think for them, Biden may not be a ball of fire when he speaks but he is the best thing going for America right now, and if we do not get behind him, we are doomed to more years of the elk of Donald Trump et al.
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Hear hear. Well said. Thanks for your comments.
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I think Biden is a lot more popular that the press says. As you surmised, they are looking for something exciting, but he’s not exciting. He’s just trying to do his job which these days, is downright remarkable. This is NOT a new problem. If you’ve ever watched the movie “Network,” it was “fantasy” when they made the movie in the mid 70s. Now? It’s reality except we have yet to have an actual murder on live TV. Otherwise, “Network” said it all. Not in a good way.
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I remember. Excellent film. Faye Dunaway, right?
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I think that one aspect of this is that we have decided that opinion is news. It’s cheaper for news outlets to pull together a panel to assess something than to send them to the library to research and put together a discussion of the issues or go out into the field and learn things. They try to create false conflicts to up ratings because we are too quick to judge only on headlines.
There are many real issues, homelessness, healthcare to name a couple, areas where in depth journalism could really help us to move into the future.
I’ve sometimes thought that journalists should not be allowed to use words like left and right, democrat and republican, or liberal and conservative as they talk about issues.
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Good points all. Thanks for your comments.
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Good information, thanks for sharing.
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A friend shared this with me yesterday on Facebook. It asks interesting questions.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202112/1240755.shtml?fbclid=IwAR1VelSuKYfq-wyY7Gm13swENR49_mDRfdntCBSEyjK1RvaINKM3b-n1Q4k
I think Biden is doing as well as can be expected 11 months into this mess. But that’s not news. News is someone messing up. I’m pretty tired of the commodification of government.
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