I’ve practically given up on traditional news sources, much to my annoyance. You see, I used to be one of those people who really enjoyed watching the news, or listening to news radio, or reading newspapers*.<\/p>\n
The combination of the ongoing economic crisis, and more recently, swine flu, has reached the point where I’ve come to the conclusion that traditional news sources n<\/em>eed to die<\/em>, if their intent is to continue down the path they’ve been increasingly following. That is they’ve\u00a0become so wracked by consumerism and revenue that coverage is rarely, if ever, measured and neutral.<\/p>\n With this, I’m not talking about obvious right-wing leanings of certain outlets such as “Fox News”, or the equally obvious left-wing leanings of other outlets such as “The Sydney Morning Herald<\/a>“.<\/p>\n What I’m talking about is the need to sensationalise, to stir hysteria, and to create dissension, so as to fulfill one simple requirement: to sell more. It has become more and more obvious that articles are rarely written any longer to simply convey the facts**. The news is not full of news any more, but of opinion. To be blunt, if there isn’t a clear distinction between a news<\/em> article and an opinion<\/em> article, then there’s something very wrong going on. There’s also insufficient disclosure of bias \u2013 that is, where the personal belief systems of the ‘journalist’ impacts the reporting.<\/p>\n