I have been watching the slow rot of television news for sometime now. It has gone from bad to a total waste of my time.

Michael Jackson dies and the television news programs forget that there is a great big world out there with tons of news that we are looking for.
Iranians haven't stopped protesting or soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have not stopped dying. Congress is still in session, bills are being debated on and what do we get 24/7, the death of a pop star.

Now Michael was a great artist but if he wasn't in the news for his strange behavior, would we be getting this much "in depth, up close and personal" infotainment news? We are asked to play along and mourn with the news programs, they want our undivided attention as they re-live Michael's life in living color. We must let the news programs tug at our heart strings so that they can stay on our televisions and get more ratings (and more money).

The news is no longer "who, what, where when and why", it is now how can we (the media) play on people's emotions to get them to watch us and thus make more money.

We have been told that this is the type of new that we really want, we are told that international news, news about the governemental process, or in depth stories on the economy is just not our "cup of tea".
Who told us this little bit of knowledge, The news organizations.
How do they know what we really want, they looked at the dwindling viewer numbers and came up with the idea that because we were not tuning them in as much, that we wanted more gossip, more rumors and opinions.
Never mind that the viewer numbers are tied closely to the number of new places now available to people looking for information, never mind that the internet offers more avenues to find information. We quit watching the same old three news programs and these three have decided to become "entertainment news" rather than just disseminaters of real information.

The sunday morning political shows have become a game that has made us less informed and more devisive, we now use the opinions of these "opinion makers" as our political ammunition to destroy the opposition, Rush said this and someone else said that and the debate is about yackers on the television instead of the issue, these motor mouths are now the issue!

Even the weather have become more about the pretty computer simulation of color swirlls and less about what weather is coming our way.

The news now plays at being our good friend, helping us save money, live better, take care of our children with ease as we work harder. With friends like these who needs to make their own decisions, all we have to do is watch their programs and live up to their standards and all will be right with the world.

I understand that I am just one person and that there are many others who like all the different things news programs have added to there reporting, but really folks, do you like that they are manipulating your emotions, do you think they are doing this for us?

A lot of people (myself included) have commented on how Sarah Palin has played at being in the news with such small non-sensical story lines, but Sarah seems to know what the media wants to provide and she is just giving them what they want.

My question to everyone, is this the type of news you want?

Thanks for reading my little diatribe, as I mourn the lose of real news on television.