This is a post I’ve been thinking about writing for a long time. Here in Saigon our Western news comes from the BBC (Good Reporting) and CNN (Complete Nonsense Network).
My main complaint comes from the endless commercials for Christiane Amanpour. In the commercial she is seen running through the trenches of some war torn part of the world in her designer coat and scarf, then goes on to explain what being a “war correspondent” is all about. It’s not that I don’t think reporters should not report on what is happening, but her reports are using war as entertainment and she is doing it for her own glory and fame.
Not many years back, the “war correspondent” was being glamorized as such a dangerous profession and how these journalists were heroes. They would be on the covers of magazines with a microphone in hand and a bullet proof vest on looking proud to be doing what they do. There were short video clips of journalists undergoing training such as crawling under barbed wire, jumping muddy ditches and so on. Is it only me who can see how ridiculous all of this is?
These people use such an awful, devastating ruiner of other peoples lives – that war is – for fame, money and to make it entertainment. If I was the commander of an army during a conflict, I swear I would have to send a rocket or two towards the five star hotel where they all stay.
The reports of CNN carry absolutely no depth what so ever and the public is spoon feed quick summaries of what the conflict is all about. I would have to say a much better site is Aljazeera which keeps a whole section devoted to the war and is much more informative than any crap CNN spews out.
Not more than 15 years ago, there were news magazines and entertainment magazines. It seems now that the two have been combined and CNN does not report news anymore but entertains the public and will make the headlines any sort of entertainment that it thinks will sell more papers. The articles are very brief and only explain what happened with no reasoning behind it or more in-depth information.
ahh – something we agree on – CNN is a useless piece of crap.