We Can Do This!

Turn on the news, any channel, and what do you hear? What do you see?  Here are some reminders:

• Ads
• More ads
• Headlines advertising what stories you are going to see if you just hang on a little longer
• A news story or two on…the weather and how it is affecting some people in some places in the land, maybe the world; and a sports upset being followed by millions of people, maybe a billion or two; and a hot skirmish between warring factions in some country or other
• Which celebrities are getting married, divorced, having kids, is newly preggers…
• More ads
• The weather forecast
• The sportscast
• More ads
• More celebrity news
• And opinion on politics

Actually much of the ‘news’ is about political opinion and is filtered accordingly.

So, for the most part the newscast is not about news at all. It is about opinion, weather, sports and celebrities. I solemnly suggest to you that 90% of these items are not news. Interest items maybe, but not news.

So I watch news less and less and then mostly for local items of happenings nearby that do affect me more directly. I’ll tune in to some newscasts to catch a specific sports outcome, or an election result or something like that.  I will follow those items I’m interested in and awaiting a report on them.

I’ve become really good at culling what I think is important. And if the newscast is shaping up to be particularly uninformative, then I turn it off.

I actually get more news from the internet. Scan the items I’m interested in, read more in depth reports as they are available, and scan the surface for emerging news items I may be interested in.

I’ve found this approach vastly more informative. I've developed discernment of what’s important and what is not. And I’ve found I am able to keep better informed than the talking heads who don’t really write their own material anyway.

Along the way the message from newscasts is negative.  It’s all about problems no one is doing anything about. It is about wars and skirmishes that will lead to war. It is about people who disagree with others without any analysis about either side of the discussion.

Here are some examples of things that I find newsworthy:

First, a quote from #windworks:

“American wind power reduced carbon emissions by 127 million tons in 2013: the equivalent of taking 20 million cars off the road.”

That’s not quite 10% of the cars operating in the nation today, but it is a good start. Especially if many of those cars are the older, less efficient models. Wind power has a role to play. The role so far is very small because the investment in wind power has been very small. But more investment is on the way. More reductions of carbon emissions will result. We can make a difference. The difference is being made and enhanced every week.

Second, Juan Williams, a respected journalist, news analyst and author, gave us this quote:

“The government did not ‘force’ insurance companies to cancel their own substandard policies. The insurance companies chose to do that rather than do what is right and bring the policies up to code.”

And this argument was made on Fox News! Obamacare has taken a lot of unfair hits by political adversaries of the President. The truth, however, is much more complicated. The insurance industry has not been happy with Obamacare. They have had a free ride for decades, literally writing their own profit making rules and tax rules, too. The time for that nonsense has come to end the free rides. The American people deserve better treatment, better policies, and fairer premiums.

Third, Jon Stewart provides another well timed comment:

“Corporations are the only reason the tax code is so complicated in the first place. Those off-shore loopholes didn't get carved out by poor people.”

Well duh! And the corporations didn't actually write those laws themselves either. They paid legislators in state houses and Congress to do that dirty work. And even then, the corporations paid lobbyists and attorneys to actually write much of the language the elected officials enacted into law.  This is your system at work. As it turns out, it is not your system at all; it belongs to corporations and large special interest groups. 

Now, did you get those news items from your nightly news casts by Brian Williams? No; you did not. That’s why I do my own research and reading.

Perhaps we all should. Just think of the ads we will miss!

July 10, 2014