Reading the News

 I gave up reading my local paper during the 2008 recession , when I was given a 10% pay cut and the editor said City employees were overpaid anyway and we should be grateful.  I called them and cancelled my decades long subscription, saying their editor suggested we cut back on our expenditures and , gosh  I realized I didn't need to pay to be insulted every single day.  The then-Mayor suggested things we could do on that extra day off- like "Go to Disneyland" or "volunteer somewhere"   Marie-Antoinette Villaraigosa had no clue.  A lot of people lost their homes- some people for whom both wage-earners were City Employees got a 20 % hit.  Yeah, so no more "Daily News" although I missed the Human Interest column written by  Dennis McCarthy.

I do miss spreading the Sunday paper on the bed and starting with the Comics.  Don't judge me.

Now I get most of my news online and I try to read the Associated Press website, the are the most objective, straight news I can find. 

I subscribe to Dan Rather's blog "steady" and also the brilliant Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from an American.  She's particularly insightful, given her background as a history professor, she brings it all together in historic context. 

I was thinking about how we got the news when we were kids.    In the evening, we would watch the news on television.  The straight talk from Walter Cronkite.  The final exchange  from Hunter and Brinkley, who would always sign off "Good night Chet" Goodnight David" from their respective studios.  Somewhere in the 70's the news turned to "Happy Anchors" who would cut up and laugh and guffaw while delivering the news.  Don Henley wrote a song about it "Dirty Laundry"   The news became less news and more new-with-opinions.  No filter and frankly the "Happy News anchors" were annoying to me.  I longed for Uncle Walter- as many people called Cronkite- to give us the straight dope.

What passes for news these days is sometimes like talking to a misinformed friend who only wants to present their view of things.  People who, for instance think ANYTHING coming off the Fox Channel -an ENTERTAINMENT CHANNEL- is anything akin to news are sadly mistaken.  I love Rachel Maddow and I often agree with her. Her monologue at the beginning is a mixture of hard news and opinion, but you can TELL the difference, unlike   F-er Carlson and Laura Ingram (the woman is the epitome of the "Bubble headed bleach blonde who comes on at 5") who look straight into the camera and lie; telling you their opinion as if it were fact.

I long for what Sgt Joe Friday used to say  "Just the facts, ma'am"