For many years now, there has been a wide-spread pandemic in the media. To be perfectly frank, it had gone to the dogs so long ago that it would be more appropriate to say that it had gone to the maggots.
Being a bit out of the loop, I was shocked to find out tonight that Lou Dobbs and CNN had made a "mutual decision" to part ways. According to Dobbs, CNN had advised him that they were moving away from his style of reporting the news to a more middle ground approach.
Lou seemed to express outrage and confusion at the notion that the public should be left to their own devices to form an opinion of goes on in the news, rather than being force fed opinions. Instead of providing impartial facts of the day, Dobbs feels that the public is ill suited to think for themselves. Heavens sake, if journalism has to resort to simply reporting the news instead of using air time to brain wash the public, they might actually have to fill in the dead air with substance.
So, unable to see the rational behind such an obviously corrupt and ridiculous notion, Dobbs opted to walk away. That's too bad. It's a good thing that John Stewart will have no shortage of other bone heads to laugh at. But, Dobbs will still be around. It's just that John will have to start listening to the radio and somehow translate that to the Daily Show. Then again, many radio stations do live web casts.
What was more surprising is that Stewart seems to be convinced that it is the media's job to not only report the news but, also provide a slant. This has always struck me as being at odds with what he actually does for a living. For such a rational and intelligent man, he seems satisfied to gather facts from people who are just flying by the seat of their pants. Well, hopefully they're wearing clean underwear because you just never know when they might get thrown under a bus.
