I Finally Gave In.

I'm holding off on my official Christmas post until after another gathering tomorrow night. I hope you've all been having a great time. The post is about a different topic that has slowly been wearing me down until I finally gave in today and decided to post on it.

A few days ago I watched the national news program on one of the major networks. I honestly don't remember which one, but it further reinforced my previous policy of not watching network news. Here are the top three stories with accompanied network spin:

1. News: Thousands take to the streets of Baghdad to protest the election results. Spin: The democratic process in Iraq is on the verge of collapse.

2. News: New Orleans police shoot a man after he lunged at an officer with a knife. Spin: The New Orleans Police Department is over-stressed, under-trained, and lacks adequate decision making skills.

3. News: Auto parts manufacturer, Delphi, is planning on cutting jobs and slashing salaries in the near future. Spin: Corporate executives are greedy and immoral.

I will now provide you with my response to the above:

1. Apparently democracy in the US has been teetering on self destruction for some time now, because I am hard pressed to remember a single year in my lifetime when thousands of people haven't taken to the streets of Washington DC in protest of some sort of political issue. The broadcast totally ignored the fact that the people in Baghdad were protesting instead of blowing up cars, police stations, etc. which I kind of thought was significant.

2. As many of you know I don't have a terribly high opinion of the NOPD, and that goes back further than Katrina, but in this case I think that they're getting screwed. What were the officers supposed to do when the guy came at them with a knife? Give him a hug? As far as the whole over-stressed and under-trained thing goes, it could very well be true, but to criticize them for shooting in this situation is ridiculous. What do we have police officers for if not to shoot men marauding the streets with knives? What is more ridiculous is that this story made national news. There was a nearly identical incident at my local Wal-Mart last month that didn't get national attention. What's the difference? Like Iraq, the national media has a fetish for anything that they can make to appear to be going wrong in New Orleans.

3. I actually agreed with the news on this one. Delphi is cutting jobs and salaries at the production level while raising salaries for top executives. Interesting considering the fact that the top executives, not the production level workers, were the ones who led the company into its current financial woes. Although I agreed with the spin of the story I was still offended by it. Why? Read on.

Final Thought. Where does the media get off on putting a spin on anything? What ever happened to "who, what, when, where, and why." I don't remember "what's your opinion on it" being listed in there. I constantly hear people complaining about how biased CNN or Fox, depending on who's brainwashing them that week, is in their reporting. The sad fact of the matter is that you pretty much have to watch both CNN and Fox to get anything close to a balanced view of what's going on in the world. Forget watching the major networks, they would be hard pressed to give you an unbiased report on the state of craters on the Moon (if there even is a Moon). I guess my overall point is that the media sucks. Much like the Democratic Party I don't have any practical solution to this problem, I just wanted to complain.