Ain't this good news for the nation?

[alp227]

(posted at Facebook's Being Liberal community page)

[defacto7]

1. It is nice to hear "good" news for a change! n/t

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Better news for the nation would be: TV news ratings decline significantly across the board...

and more people get their news from newspapers and magazines. Television makes you stupid, and American TV "news", by and large, sucks, regardless of the network it's on.

[LeftishBrit]

6. In the UK, it would be quite different..

The BBC, though far from perfect, is much better than most of our newspapers. Good news for my nation would be if people stopped reading the tabloids!

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. True...

but then the Guardian, Independent, Times and Telegraph are pretty much in a league of their own relative to the rest anyway. Although the BBC is less overtly biased than any of them; interesting difference in UK and US news media, I think, in the US newspapers generally try to present some illusion of "balance" (with columnists presenting views of both left and right, etc...except for a few overtly right-wing outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times), while there's more overt partisanship on news channels like Fox News and MSNBC; in the UK all the major newspapers have a clear and (mostly) consistent editorial bias, and it's the BBC that's balanced.

And, yeah, most of the newspapers are pretty dreadful, the broadsheets are the only ones I buy or read online (usually not the Times because I have a moral objection to giving Rupert Murdoch any of my money).

[RudynJack]

7. I disagree.

Better news would be for TV news to actually return to journalism, and get away from alarmism and punditry.

Newspapers and news weeklies are dying - almost dead. Nobody waits until the next morning to learn what happened in the world the day before. The networks are effectively meaningless nowadays as far as news.

It's 24-hour cable and the internet - we need to find ways to improve both, but I'm not optimistic. They're all supposed to be profitable now, and I don't see them paying for good journalists and good editors.

I don't know what the solution is, but we're headed down a bad path when CNN devotes time to what people on Twitter are saying, and when a crisis occurs on the weekend, MSNBC still gives us episodes of "Lockdown".

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. When has TV news ever been that interested in journalism?

And it's pretty consistent; people who get their news from online news sites and newspapers (that is to say, by reading), are likely to be better-informed than those who get their news from TV and radio (which has to do with modes of information acquisition, probably; reading is active, watching TV or listening to the radio is passive and frequently just background noise).

[RudynJack]

12. I suppose

you don't know about Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and others. They WERE the news in their time. Networks lost money on news reporting for the viewership and the prestige.

It was only in the 80s or so that they started shifting to making news a profit center. And it's gone downhill since then.

But then again, NOBODY does anything for good reasons anymore. Supermarkets don't staff enough cashiers, tech companies don't have adequate customer service, etc. etc. The notion that there's a picture bigger than this month's profits has gone the wayside. And we're all the worse for it.

I remember when restaurants and hotels had bathroom attendants, elevator operators, doormen. Gas stations had attendants. And those were for everyone. Now only the very rich enjoy these luxuries that used to be basics. I'm glad I'm getting up there in years, because I'd hate to see where this is headed many years from now.

[freshwest]

3. It sure is. Let's keep it up. Thanks, alp!

[golfguru]

4. The news which bugs me the most is

that 8.5 Million people have left the work force since Bush left White House. The mess created by Bush was lot bigger than any one thought. I think the work force will get even smaller in the next few years. America's best days are behind us. The rest of world can make anything we can at half price. We are in dire straits.

[cer7711]

5. My God, Sanity Is Breaking Out!

How long can this continue?

[gtar100]

9. "But we're still a center-right country... a center-right country!! Waaaa!"

Thus sayeth the good and faithful republicans.

that's the good ship GOP.