Thursday, July 2, 2009

Sunrise.

One thing that hadn't occurred to me about summer living at this latitude is how long the days are. The sun rises before 5:30 and doesn't set until past 9. I find myself waking up around six and not being able to return to sleep. I realized I didn't have any reason to fight this, so I have begun making the most of my morning hours, which I love.

Perusing various news sites this morning, it occurred to me that Cnn isn't quite the reputable news source I had previously imagined. Not that their reporting seems flawed or overtly biased, but the stories covered and emphasized barely reflect what I see as the important issues of the world. I feel I could thoroughly read Cnn.com every day and still be relatively uninformed about actual news stories. On the other hand, I would be very informed about celebrity news and crime stories. I would know all about who had been kidnapped lately and who the prime suspects were, in addition to any minor setback a celebrity may encounter, but I would only have a shallow awareness of any other event.
It still doesn't compare to fox news in terms of vacuous coverage, but it is much closer than I had previously thought. I'm not saying Cnn.com is terrible, it just isn't what I had imagined before I tried using it. I had imagined it being more in depth and relavent, instead of gossipy tabloid. It does have articles on 'important' issues, but they are far from the focus. For example, a very important bill was enacted today effecting the federal student loan program, CNN.com has reported on it, but one would have to search for this article to find it. What you wouldn't have to search for are articles like 'Disco Saves man's life' 'photo may show children's grave' about a murder which happened over a decade ago.

2 comments:

  1. yeah, i remember thinking cnn was good and respectable when i was younger, (like fifteen or sixteen). I'm not sure if it got worse or i just didn't notice how bad it was when i was younger.

    Also I used to always think it was silly when people said it was biased towards democrats but since Obama got elected I have been noticing it a little. It's not nearly as biased towards democrats as fox news is against them but it is still noticable

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  2. i agree with you. a recent example is how cnn kept reporting all day long on the death of michael jackson while there was a coup going on in Honduras which they didnt report near as much.

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