The Not News

There is nothing new about this critique. In fact, it’s worn out, but wow, the news is just terrible these days. And, as bad as the news is, the audience is worse.

I suppose this is a bit of a chicken and egg dilemma but someone is driving the quality of content into the ground. Furthermore, the news items that don’t matter, that frankly shouldn’t be news items, are being given incredible prominence.

It’s possible news organizations and rags started this trend, but unfortunately, I think audiences are driving content these days. Online tracking of most viewed articles is surely a great tool to increase revenue but it’s just killing the quality of news sources. Newspapers are giving the people what they want and what they want is crap. There really is no debate; the decline into global idiocracy is well underway.

Case and point, my CNN news feed on my igoogle page and The Times of India’s list of most popular stories.

This morning CNN’s top stories were: “Blackout brings Giants-Cowboys game to brief halt,” “Iran developing long-range radar, upgraded missile defense,” and “Haiti cholera death toll passes 900.”


Holy smokes, a brief blackout during a football game makes the top three list, much less beats out the staggering news of a cholera epidemic in Haiti! Infuriating. Absolutely infuriating.

Now, the top stories from The Times of India. I’m not even going to bother typing the titles out. I’m too busy knocking over chairs and shaking my head. Just look for yourself.