There Was No News On Last Night's Cable News Shows

At 1 a.m. Eastern time last night, I made the mistake of trying to flipping through television news channels, in an attempt to find out about election results around the country.

I soon became very frustrated.

Fox News Channel offered a repeat of Your World With Neil Cavuto, with the top story "We Are Winning War on Terror!" A reporter parroted a recent Bush Administration talking point that it had thwarted 10 potential terrorist attacks -- a month-old claim that many have criticized as misleading.

On CNN, Larry King's interview with Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen, stars of the new movie, "Derailed," was just ending. Instead of the recently dismissed Aaron Brown's nightly news program, on came Anderson Cooper 360, which had a riveting, timely top story -- about how divorce affects families.

On MSNBC, I found a repeat of Rita Cosby's Live and Direct, which led with an effort, including the parents of Natalee Holloway, to have vacationers boycott Aruba.

CNBC had a repeat of The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch. CNN Headline News aired a repeat of Nancy Grace.

The best I could do was a local cable station, News 12, which had results for my home state of New Jersey, but didn't mention the rest of the country.

***

This is what cable news has become. If you want to watch a news wrap-up, you have to stay home during the daytime. In the quest for ratings, "news" networks have established night-time lineups dominated by opinion.

With the demise of Aaron Brown's show, the closest thing to news now is MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann, during which Olbermann often interjects liberal viewpoints as he discusses a handful of top stories. Otherwise, uninformed viewers won't be assisted by most nightly cable news shows.

That's not only frustrating ... it's dangerous. Why? An uninformed society is far more likely to accept spin as fact.

***

This item first appeared at Journalists Against Bush's B.S.

I started trying to find out around 10:30 CST. Nada. Zip!!!

DU was the only place to find the info! :applause:

one had to list to the BS with it.

i suspect if it was "night of the rightwing nuts" the coverage would have been there.

One poster did say that it was because these were all State and local elections, and that National News rarely covers them.

I guess that's true. Even though we were very interested in seeing a Dem sweep, I wonder just how many non-junkie types would care?

They are becoming increasingly irrelevent.

Today, they were gifted with another distraction. A new trial for Andrea Yates. They are showing stock footage of her handcuffed and getting into a cop car, over and over and over and over.....

Whatever!

That was a headline segment on all of the stations at eight o'clock.

It wasn't just election news missing from last night. It was any news. News from Iraq. News about Bush in South America/Panama. News about the revolt in France.

The closest thing to news in the examples I saw was Rita Cosby. At least she was reporting on something that happened yesterday.

Came home from a party, got the local (I'm in Philly) ie, New Jersey news on our am all news station...but had to search and search for anything on VA on the tube. Finally just logged into DU and got (whoopee) what I needed. What I don't understand is why they don't use those damn distracting crawls to repeat election bulletins while they're rerunning their shows in the wee hours.

IWT is coming in 2007! Independent World Television!

"Independent World Television is building the world’s first global independent news network. Online and on TV, IWTnews will deliver independent news and real debate from professional and citizen journalists -– without funding from governments, corporations or commercial advertising."

http://www.iwtnews.com/videoplayer/birthofanetwork/dialup


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5280775

I got so enthusiastic watching the "birthofanetwork" video I cut it short to donate some buckolas!

I can't wait to see this network take off! Fingers and toes crossed...

P.S. Way to go, California !!!:patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot:

having some election news on at all hours!

This country is going to get the real news one way or another, and I can't wait to see chicken noodle nooze go down the drain..how dare they don't give our real news.

CALIFORNIA! THANK YOU! :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: Trifecta and then some!

If there was, don't you think it would have been reported on the news?

duh



Please tell me you can detect the :sarcasm:

I guess that just means it's no longer "news". Bastards!!!

Why put yourself thru the "fear of the unknown" with the cable networks? Why give them more of your money for a worthless product?

It pretty lame that DEMOCRACY is such a yawner.

to have something....but no, something completely unrelated and canned. I haven't watched HNN in years, it's not what it used to be.