Honestly, the only thing to do is concentrate on the FACTUAL parts of a news report and the minute they go to an "expert" for an opinion on an event, shut the ******* TV, radio, or whatever off.
It's not the news that is getting perverted, it's the 24-hour cycle of wannabe celebrity asshats that put their 2 cents on top of every small, insignificant story in an attempt to rile up their base to screaming lunatics. And the mainstream networks are in a constant battle to find the loudest, most obnoxious, most radical asshat of the bunch.
It's the same thing that's happened to ESPN. ESPN used to be sports news. A 30-minute Sportscenter ran over and over from 6PM to 12PM. If something factual happened, they would interrupt the cycle and report on it. Same thing with CNN, which used to just be a 30 minute news cast by no-name anchors in a constant perpetual loop.
Honest, that's what news is. The plain and simple facts.
But it's been perverted into News now being "analysis" of the News and that isn't news. That's editorials and opinions which are strongly edited by the political position of the media source (just like the Op-Ed in Newspapers used to be the most powerful thing in print and strictly controlled by an editorial board and owner of the paper).
In a 24-hour news cycle, the balance between a news story AND the Op-Ed's have shifted so greatly we are losing track of what is fact and what is opinion (and heavily politicized).
And as with what happened with ESPN and sports reporting, the minute they got too "Op-Ed" about sports, people leave. And the internet has provided pathways and mega information for all of us to create our OWN, often more educated, Op-Ed positions. And when we continue to hear the asshats on TV and know, deep down, we know more than them. The curtain kind of gets pulled back on the whole Oz world they've tried to create of themselves as "experts" on anything.
I don't consider Mike Ditka an expert on football at all. I think he's got a 100 IQ (if that) and a lunatic. I think I know more about X's and O's than he does honestly. But he was promoted by ESPN as an "expert" of football and that's when this whole shell game breaks down. Same for Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin and about 90% of the whole lot.
The same thing has happened to the so-called "serious news experts" and "political experts" as well. Research of everything they say is a couple clicks away. And you can start to see through the bullshit. The standard cliches for the 100th time.
It's all the same. ESPN degraded to talking heads is the same as ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, CNN, etc. degrading as well.
I'm surprised Tibs even defends them because it would be like any knowledgeable sports fan trying to defend that ESPN actually REPORTS THE NEWS in sports in an unbiased way. It doesn't.
Just like MSM and the political parties, ESPN became financially tied to all the sports it covers and thus the foundation for "dual-cooperation" and a "symbiotic" relationship formed between the NFL and ESPN, MLB and ESPN, et. al.
It is SO CLEAR when using the corruption of ESPN as a "news agency" and how they have morphed into a propaganda arm for the NFL. The same is SO CLEAR of many of the main stream media networks and their ties to political parties.
So just like sports, you only listen to the facts. Who beat who. What the numbers are. And you go make up your own opinions about how. Everything else they throw at you is tainted.
