I was in my office this morning working on a project and before watching our church live stream I turned on some of the Sunday morning political pundits to see what they were talking about. I heard one of the hosts say that The Huffington Post was celebrating it’s 5th year online this weekend. They also went on to say that The Huffington Post was neck in neck w/ The New York Times in terms of traffic to their website. This got me to thinking. Arianna started 5 years ago, and The New York Times was founded when? Oh, 1851… hmm…
I am not a follower of The Huffington Post, I’m not a big fan of news outlets that lean too far in either direction when it comes to their political reporting. I like to think of myself as an intelligent person, just tell me what’s going on and I will form my own opinion. It’s for that very reason that I don’t watch Fox News. I don’t need Glen Beck to give me reasons as to why I should be mad about things, because honestly I figure myself to be a little sharper than his average viewer. I don’t mean that in a bad way, that’s just how it is.
Now, I do think Glen Beck has it going on, as long as people are buying into his show, he is going to continue to make a bundle from it. Isn’t that what it’s all about at the end of the day? You pay me what they pay him and I will go on television and convince people they can fly. haha. But, by getting on the level that Fox does w/ a lot of their programming, haven’t they left themselves wide open to have their market share consumed by other angry and opinionated bloggers like Arianna? It’s not just Fox either, it’s almost all of the news agencies today, print, television, radio, etc. Back in the day it didn’t used to be that way…
I bet the average person never really knew Walter Cronkite’s personal political leanings, he just did his job and reported the news. That’s why he was the most trusted man in America at one time, he didn’t try to put a spin on it, didn’t have to, he’d never heard of a blogger. It was what it was w/ Cronkite. We landed on the moon. Kennedy is dead. The Nation Mourns. Of course later in life, when he wasn’t behind the CBS news desk he did do some freelance work for outlets like The Huffington Post and a few others, but he used this outlet to express his views and not from behind the news desk!
Now, fast forward 40 years… News outlets complain about losses in revenue, market share, etc., but by injecting their agendas into their product (the news) haven’t they left themselves wide open for this the entire time. I have to think they sort of did. I think it’s great that anyone w/ an opinion can fire up a blog and become a media rock star overnight. Sort of evens out the playing field a little bit. Now, again for the record, I don’t follow Arianna Huffington, nor do I agree w/ many of her ideas, but kudos to her as a blogger for what she has been able to do.
The bottom line I guess, if I was trapped in a corn maze w/ Arianna Huffington and Rupert Murdoch, and I had to work with one of them to find my way out of the maze, Rupert is SOL…
I hate FoxNews and I am a Southern Baptist Republican. They make the rest of us look like we are hate mongers and it has only gotten worse since Obama was elected president. Things are not as bad right now as they were when he took office. I know that the environmental people are upset about the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico but come on, what could Obama had done to prevent that. All media outlets MSNBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, BBC all put politicians and policies under a microscope and report things in a bias fashion as propoganda.
Yeah, I sort of agree w/ everything you said. The point I was trying to make in the post was that most media outlets have let themselves become too involved in political commentary and have placed themselves in a market that is vastly becoming powered by bloggers, ie. Politico, Huffington, etc.
I have to agree. The media coverage has nothing to do with objective facts any more. More and more became journalists involved and try to obtrude us their opinion. Now we are in the situation to screen the informations about what is essentially and what is not….