Tax Day 2020 marks to the 30th day of the “New Normal”. What was slated to last for 15 days has now lasted for 15 days times 2. This will be first year in my adult life that I did not have my taxes done well before the April 15th deadline. The government extended the deadline, so I took the opportunity to procrastinate.
About a week ago, it felt as if the media was beginning to take a positive turn. Now, it feels like things have gone the extreme opposite direction. What has changed? Nothing really, the media reports what the media wants people to believe.
Top news stories beyond the Coronavirus are that Biden is the foregone conclusion for the Democratic Party nomination. Biden now has the endorsement of Obama and Bernie Sanders. He lost to Hilary Clinton in the Democratic Party nomination process 4 years ago. I have always wondered if he had won his party nomination if he would have won against Trump in 2016.
Top local news is the incredibly beautiful weather and the insane pollen count. It is a rough week for Houstonians, who are allergic to pollen. Brainy Bird is one of those folks. Little Chirp does not seem to have any kind of allergies, which is rare for someone that lives in Houston.
The local news sort of struck a chord with me this morning. I like the local newscast on KHOU. I feel like they love Houston, and that they take pride in living here. I share this sentiment. What bothered me this morning was the reporter saying redundantly that we should all get outside and get some exercise because the weather is so beautiful this morning. She feels it will be good for us all to get outside. I agree with her, and I do believe she meant well. My issue is – Why is the news telling us what to do? Isn’t it their job to report the facts?
I think a great school assignment for high school kids would be to record 24 hours worth of news broadcasts, and then separate each sentence of the broadcast into facts, conclusions and opinions. Then everything that is deemed fact, find additional supporting evidence that things really happened as reported. I would be curious to know how many hours of news reporting is verifiable facts.
I need to get to work now. Thank you for stopping by to read my thoughts.
I haven’t watched local news in twenty-five years, but it seems to me that the internet had a noticeable effect on cable television news — people no longer go to television news to get the facts; they go to the internet. (Whether they actually get facts from the internet is a different matter…) I have the impression, which is probably about as reliable as the average cable news show, that cable news made the same sort of shift that ESPN did, in that they started doing opinion shows rather than news shows because news no longer produced ratings.
So now I don’t watch cable news either…