Living in a Mediacracy.

While there is no question that Fox News is the most despicable pretend-news source on television; almost every news outlet has become pathetic. With the exception of PBS there is no in-depth reporting. How can anything that last 60 seconds be in-depth? Also, how can a country be informed when ratings-nervous news directors decide which stories to tell and which to avoid? Americans heard more about an insignificant Gainesville church's threatened Quaran-burning than they did about the world-affecting war in Afghanistan. The news gives us constant reports on ever-changing and unreliable polls which sway the opinions of the vacillating and ill-informed masses. They tease us with comments like this. "New pill may save millions of lives. Tune in in Thursday." Is this responsible news? The news deluges us with the misspeaks from cyphers like Sarah Palin and not the wisdom of world geniuses like Stephen Hawking. They gives us cultural reports on Lady Gaga but don't seem to even know that American's greatest composer/lyricist even exists. They use words that most people don't know without ever explaining them. (I'm smart and I haven't' a clue what cap and trade is or even it's cap 'n trade.) Serious newsman like Edward R. Murrow are replaced by anchor models who make myriad grammatical and pronunciation errors. American is in danger of becoming a mediacracy: a country whose opinions and interests are not informed by but created by broadcast and printed news, just as Fox has seized the reasoning of its especially vacuuous viewers. I don't think it was a coincidence that Orwell used the word newspeak as a dumbing-down vocabulary tool for its oppressive society in 1984. I thought it meant "new" but now I'm convinced it meant "news?"