Media focus on the trivial

Al Gore in his new book "The Assault on Reason" decries the short shrift given important news by the television news media and a focus on sensational events like the O.J. Simpson trial. Gore at first thought the O.J. trial coverage was an aberration, but to his dismay saw that news event followed by more like it: the Levi murder, Peterson murder, Terry Schiavo, and on and on. Add to this the daily recap by all the media of the latest American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, Lost, and other weekly T.V. serials, and the important news of the day gets shut out. The latest example of trivialization was the "dust-up" between Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on "The View". At issue, was whether Rosie O'Donnell called our troops in Iraq terrorists. Within the day, this event was discussed on the Glenn Beck Show, Hardball, Hannity and Colmes, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and Joe Scarborough. It was also covered on the morning talk shows. Guess what got left out? The real war going on in Iraq, where our troops are dying on a daily basis. But we seemed to more concerned about a verbal fistfight on a highly rated talk show. This is not an isolated instance. Every day, especially on the cable media, we are given our celebrity worship segment, where we are priviliged to hear the latest gossip about Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan. The challenge each day is to find out any hard news about the war in Iraq. No wonder the President can spin the news anyway he pleases. We have very little facts with which to challenge him. The bottom line is the television media for sure is not doing their job in prioritizing news that is important to us citizens. The founding fathers were counting on an informed citizenry to protect our democracy. Don't count on us getting any useful information from television. Our alternatives are to go back to reading the newspaper which can also be problematic, or turn to the internet, where with the power of search engines like Google, we can dig for the information we need to make informed decisions that affect the future of our country.