I have lamented before on this blog about how silly a waste
of time it is for news channels to talk for days and days about what’s going to
happen in an election or a court decision, etc. I was reminded again today
about this when CNN asked Jeffrey Toobin to predict the outcome of the Supreme
Court challenge to DOMA. He said that his record is not very good at accurately
predicting what the Supreme Court is going to decide (despite being an “expert”
on the Supreme Court who has written a book about them), and I heartily agree:
he’s wrong a lot! (Which begs the question of why he’s an “expert”, but
whatever…) So then why bother asking him what the ruling is going to be? Why
not report on other news until the Supreme Court announces their ruling, and
then tell us then? Isn’t all this silly prognostication a complete and utter
waste of time for everyone involved that necessarily denies the news-hungry
public the actual news that they’ve tuned in to learn about? Surely there must
be other things going on, right? I mean, show the protesters, explain the case,
report on the argument if they want to because that stuff is news, but why not
just wait for the decision and analyze it then? Analyzing hypotheticals is
meaningless nonsense. It’s more like phony psychic readings than news. I mean
seriously: give us all a break!
It’s even worse around election time, because they’ve got
their panels and stuff and they’re sitting there all day and all night talking
about what’s going to happen, and then when we find out what happened, they’re
usually wrong about lots, and they’ve definitely wasted everyone’s time. If they’re going to do this, why not hire
psychics rather than news reporters? At least psychics would be entertaining to
watch guessing what’s going to happen, and it might actually be enjoyable to
see them be shown up for the frauds they are. But with news people, it’s really
just pathetic all around, because we’re supposed to be able to trust these
people, but when they spend so much time guessing what’s going to happen, they
let all their biases and agendas and stuff show, and then it becomes clear that
they’re really pushing agendas more than reporting facts to us most of the
time. And that’s just a betrayal of what news is supposed to provide: unbiased
facts. I can analyze facts on my own, I don’t need some partisan hacks to do it
for me with spin galore, thank you.
But seriously: wouldn’t you rather see some swami in a
turban stare into a glowing crystal ball and guess the results of an election,
rather than see some cable news anchor do it? At least it would have
entertainment value then. (Psychics are only for entertainment purposes, you
know. And news anchors guessing about the outcome of something we’ll find out
about in a few hours is not for entertainment purposes, it’s for time wasting
purposes: time we’ll never get back.) Then CNN wouldn’t need to use all that
silly 3D technology that just gets them made fun of on The Daily Show. (I mean, this would get them made fun of too, but
at least it would be less expensive, and it would be more appropriate to have
phony psychics trying to guess what’s going to happen than it is to have news
analysts do it. Plus, it would be more dignified not to have news analysts and
“experts” constantly showing us how wrong they are about everything like they
do now with their attempts to predict everything before it happens.)
