First Rant of the Year

"All the News That's Fit to Print" is the slogan or motto for the New York Times and I sometimes wish that the local television stations felt the same way about there news programs. If they would only show just the stories that were worth watching, informing or uplifting the public they would be so much better than they are now.

I dislike local television news because it is so full of sensationalism. Not that the national network news is any better, but local news no matter where you go will put on the most outrageous stories just to get ratings...and that annoys me.

I think that Philadelphia TV market is the 4th or 5th largest television market in the the US. It covers not only the city of Philadelphia and the rest of South Eastern Pennsylvania, but all of New Jersey south of Trenton and pretty much all of the State of Delaware. I don't know how many people that would be, but suffice to say that's a pretty big audience with Channel 6's news getting the largest share ratings.

It's believed that Channel 6's Action News garners it's audience because they show more stories about violence and abuse, house burnings and diseases threatening to wipe out mankind than does the competition. And if perchance there should a story that involves a race issue where someone is being hurt or threatened, then they will go all out and enlarge the story and do an in-depth investigation and or analysis of the situation until they can't squeeze anything else out of what will be seen after a few weeks to have been a story about nothing. But like I said before, local news appears to be the same where ever you go.

I saw the story below coming out of Atlanta where some guy wants to start up a "Whites Only" basket ball league of US born citizens only and I wondered what was all the fuss about? Doesn't someone at the news station know that as soon as the man puts his sign up on the street and before the paint has been given a chance to dry, his business would be sued and shut down by the community and the courts for discrimination. Can no one figure out that this man would be filing for bankruptcy before he even took in his first dollar? Does no one there know that that this man's actions would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause in the Constitution?

The story is a non-issue and yet they felt it was important enough for them to air it and feed it the other local stations so that they could fill their time with nonsense.

Oh, how I hate local TV news.