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I know, easy target. But this was reinforced today when I was watching CCTV News - the English-language channel run by the Chinese government, of all institutions. It had much more thorough, in-depth, pertinent, and (believe it or not) unbiased coverage of worldwide news than any of our pitiful stations could ever hope to have. CCTV would spend 5-10 minutes with each story, going over the facts, going thoroughly into the story. On a typical US news station, you'd be lucky if the story reported a full two minutes of facts before breaking down into a debate or commentary over the information.

Seriously, I was watching CNN last week, talking about the BP oil spill. They went over the actual story for about 30 seconds before they had someone going into some bull**** on how Barack Obama should approach the situation if he wants to raise his approval ratings.

Bitch, **** the approval ratings. That's not ****ing pertinent to the situation.

Also refreshing was how none of the news on CCTV was constructed in a manner that was trying to be scary or ominous - the presentation just stuck to the facts without making it seem like the world was going to end.

The best part of this all, is that the whole reason that the US news reports opinion instead of fact and tries to make the news scary and all that other BS is because they're trying to obtain ratings, and these strategies are supposed to make the news more "entertaining" to people, yet I found myself much more interested in watching CCTV, whereas crap like CNN and Fox News just makes me angry because I can see through their bull****.

I'm just gonna declare this topic truth and leave it at that.

The only news worse than Network News is entertainment news.

You couldn't be more right about that, Andre. Our media can't even get entertainment news right. Instead of discussing news about music or films, they discuss news about embarrassing incidents involving musicians and actors, or who's dating who, or whatever. Nothing that actually deals with the entertainment itself. Noting that really has any impact on anyone who isn't a celebrity anyway, unless they're an obsessive fan or something like that.

Also, the simple fact that time that could be spent going more in depth on more pertinent news is wasted on celebrity bull**** is deplorable.

american media is festering ****hole of... ****.

Every event in the news is politicized here because it's all about which party is going to do what and garnering ratings for the station and favor for the party. In China, debate between pundits on the news just wouldn't fit their government type. Then again, the way our news media is just may be something unique to America. More people like to argue and be entertained more than have a bunch of dry facts laid out in front of them, I guess.

They did eventually have a debate on air, albeit it was about a China-specific topic (the end of "cheap labor" in China and how it will effect the economy). The three experts debating were all very civilized in their discussion, and everyone had their turn to talk without interrupting each other. It was beautiful. But I guess most Americans would find it "boring." But this type of news that's meant to be "entertaining" is really destroying America, I think, and is probably a large part of the increasing rowdiness and tension between the right and left wings among regular, non-politicians around the nation.

Did any of them talk about what the government in China should do (in the labor debate)?

That's mostly what the debate was about. Contrary to what a lot of people would have you believe, the Chinese government wants their citizens to have better wages. The problem comes with the fact that better wages could mean a lot of people losing jobs because of other countries' corporations (Nike, etc.) moving their factories to countries where labor is even cheaper. Considering that the average Chinese factory worker makes less than the equivalent of US $1 per hour, we're talking about countries where people make the equivalent of $0.50 per week or even less sometimes. Ultimately, the debate was over what will be the best for the most amount of people. The three people debating, in fact, were a business analyst from Beijing, one from Hong Kong (which is pretty much its own autonomous country, if you didn't already know), and a professor from Leeds.

Not that I'm saying that the Chinese government is perfect - no, they're very far from it and I disagree with many of the things they do - but some people paint them out to be a lot worse than they actually are. Next to North Korea, they're golden saints. At least Chinese people actually want to live in China. So many North Koreans are trying to defect to other countries, it's crazy.

Yeah, with American media consisting mostly of 5 major corporations who joust for ratings rather than reality, it's no surprise that the news next door is more fact-based. Since that kind of thing doesn't fly in other countries. At least, many of them.

^^I was not concerned with whether or not the Chinese government wants to alleviate that problem, just with how much open criticism they would allow.

Tragedy strikes Indonesia as thousands are killed in a violent typhoon.

BUT FIRST, MORE ON THE JESSE JAMES/SANDRA BULLOCK SCANDAL. CAN HE WIN HER BACK? POST YOUR THOUGHTS ON OUR WEBSITE AND WE'LL READ THEM ON THE AIR.

This is the reason I hate Nancy Grace. She force-feeds her opinions on everyone, and also interrupts people so she can get her opinion out. And I also find it odd how the only stories she covers are child abuse and celebrities abusing children. Are those seriously the only things that are getting ratings?

Also, she's ugly. But that's irrelevant.

Yeah, that sort of stuff infuriates me. If you're going to have a twenty-four hour news channel, at least try to have a few hours of news in there somewhere.

Even sitting down for the evening news on TV feels like such a huge waste of time. The headline might be interesting ("Someone dies, everyone stay indoors!"), but most of it is just crap. Opinions on the street? Why the hell would I give a damn what they think?

Im seeing these kind of news getting more frequent in sweden but not to a so big extent.

Though it is mostly in their own newspappers and not so much in the TV media but they have gotten some of their own channels where they try to send their own news, some more successful than other.

Since we have SVT the company that is owned by the goverment and commercial companies, we have a great divercity in what we want to see, generaly if you want good facts and debates you go to SVT and if you want more entertainment you go the commercial channels. they have in some way found a nice balance in there.

The debates is in general well mannered and civilised and the worst that can happend is that someone comes with a suggestion that makes the other part stammer a bit but then moves on, but then i would not say that the actual discussion is saying much about anything.

Just wanted to give the scandinavian point of the whole thing!

News isn't like that here. *shrug* I generally avoided all forms of television when I've been in the US, even moreso than I usually do. It was pretty deplorable how bad the shows are, including all "serious" programming.

We get our share of media entertainment, and the gossipping about our government officials, but news still tends to be a report on events occurring. We also get a lot more international news, since not a lot happens over here.

#bowbow wrote:The only news worse than Network News is entertainment news.

I've watched TMZ like 5 times, and I still don't get it. They take random pictures of celebrities for like a second, and then we get to see the TMZ crew talking about what the celebrity might be doing and cracking awful jokes for five minutes after?

^Watching TMZ is like having somebody read the Enquirer to you out loud like a storybook, showing you the pictures on each page. Fitting, I suppose, considering the likely literacy levels of people who are so addicted to such gossip.

What's really getting to me lately is the "NewsEdge", an extra half-hour show FOX has started forcing its affiliates to do right after the normal local news; it's pretty much just another trash show like Extra, ET, TMZ, Inside Edition, etc., but with a local host so it's "more relevant" despite not concerning itself with local stuff at all.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

Val's comment isn't an exaggeration... at all.

My dad watches the French News because he's all French and stuff. I specifically remember them doing live coverage on a horrible natural disaster going on elsewhere in the world. That same night, US news was talking about the destroyed career of a certain sports player.

I see where our priorities are.

Pop News Quiz, who here knows about the Freedom Flotilla incident in Israel?

If you don't, its ok because CNN literally did not report it all, msnbc only touched on it and ironically fox gave it the most coverage (except nobody wants to watch fox), even though it was a international nightmare in which Israel killed several people including at least one American citizen!!!!

**** American media