“Fake” news vs. “Real” news.

I was planning on writing some fiction today. It’s Friday, after all, and that’s the schedule I established for myself. But in light of last night’s riveting discussion about abortion on The Daily Show, and seeing the continuing anti-Obama rhetoric spewing out of various conservative camps, it was time for me to discuss why I get my news from a so-called “fake” source as opposed to a “real” one like, oh say for example, Fox News.

I have a problem with Fox on a fundamental level. At the cinemas, they’ve gotten into the habit of doing very unclean things to beloved stories & characters, like the X-Men. On the television, they cancel good shows like Firefly and Sarah Connor Chronicles and more often than not do bad things to the remaining shows, like 24. And then there’s their “news.” I use the quotation marks with news because Joe Scarborough or Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity will read a single headline and, rather than investigating the issue at hand, will do their utmost to verbally illustrate how subject X is against everything they believe in and everything that is morally and intrinsically right, then proceed to shout down anybody who tries to voice a dissenting or even neutral opinion. Everything to them is white or black, right or wrong, and they’re always on the side of white and right.

Everybody’s going to have their opinions, and we’re all entitled to keep and defend the ones we form as individuals. Look at Jon and Mike. They’re intelligent and opinionated adults who differ on a rather delicate and large issue. However, rather than the conservative shouting down the liberal, the two of them sit down and discuss, at length and in detail, the nuances and difficulties of the abortion issue. It’s a serious discussion, yet it’s done in an intelligent way that shows respect to both sides. If this is “liberal media bias,” I think we could all use a bit more of it.

Let’s say for example that President Obama does something that we don’t agree with. How do we best address the issue? Do we look at the entire situation, try to determine why he made the decision he rendered, and how we can inform him and the government at large that we disagree? Or do we grab the nearest media outlet and scream at the top of our lungs, calling him incompetent, asleep at the switch, communist or Muslim or whatever the conservative buzzword is that day? I’m not saying that conservatives aren’t entitled to their opinions, it’s just very difficult not to feel that the likes of the Fox battalion are less journalists & columnists and more schoolyard bullies that never grew up.

And that’s without touching Rush.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel that if we treated political and social issues more like debates and less like open warfare, society as a whole would be a lot better off. Unfortunately, I’m not featured on television or radio news media, so I doubt my opinion will count for much. At least I know that in America I’m entitled to have it and cannot be condemned for it.

Unless I’m trying to discuss it with Bill O’Reilly.