The Sad State of Affairs of our "News Media"

Well, took a bit to get this into my blog, but it has really steamed me.  I first heard about it via Glenn Greenwald's twitter feed.


What happened was that on MSNBC, while interviewing a Congresswoman about the NSA and the recent critical report, MSNBC and Andrea Mitchell interrupted the interview with - news of Justin Beiber's arrest and court hearing.  Yes, that's right.  You can easily find the video online - here's a good one.


First - are Americans so apathetic and dumbed down that we actually consider Bieber to be more important than the NSA scandal?  Well, looks like MSNBC thinks so.  And look at most of the news programs... too much "pop culture", celebrity scandals (they were all over the 'Duck Dynasty' controversy) and such.  I don't know if there has been any dedicated program which has really looked at the issues involved with the NSA spying.  And as I may have said before on this blog, I can remember a dedicated news program about the Pentagon Papers with reporters giving  the arguments for both the NYT and WP and also the government.  Where is that coverage today?


Second - I wondered about this and some commenters on different uploads of the MSNBC video did as well - was this really to be a distraction from the issue at hand?  I wondered about this particularly since the report they were talking about was critical of the NSA. 


So people - wake up!  Demand decent coverage of this and other critical issues.  Search for good information.  I know that can be hard to find, but search we must.   And let's get our priorities straight and insist the news media get theirs straight as well.