Why I Prefer Weblogs For My News, Pt. 1,285

I was just seeing somebody on CNN pontificating on the "Roadmap to Peace" and once again it struck me how little I can stand the standard "network" news.

The "standard" media take such an infuriatingly naive view of events. They take everything anybody says at face value, from right-wing wackos and left-wing wackos, and everything in between. They live in a strange little fantasy land where only first-order effects matter and where everybody always says exactly what they are really intending. Oh, and simply attacking your current guest with no particular regard for logic or reason passes for "insightful commentary". (I've seen this from both O'Reilly and CNN, so it's not a right/left thing either.)

You know, not everybody means what they say. Maybe the Roadmap was supposed to fail. Maybe the real news of the war is in covert ops and going unreported. Maybe that judge in Alabama insisting on the Ten Commandments being in the courthouse wasn't being a religious fundamentalist but making a cold, calculated play for the hearts of the people who need to re-elect him. (Tell me this doesn't sound like a campaign speech aimed at a certain demographic.)

The point isn't that those things are necessarily true, but that they show a deeper analysis of the issues then you can get from "conventional media". And while I'm sure you can find "conventional media" columnists who may have mentioned some of those things at some point, I get a lot more of that sort of thing from the weblogs I read. While you do need a certain level of basic, factual reporting, the level of credulity demonstrated by the reporters in general boggles my mind. I'm glad I have easy access to more sophisticated news sources; they can't all be right, but at least I get to think about more things and weigh the aspects myself.