Thomas Jefferson once said, “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
And while newspapers have completely lost their relevance in modern day society, replacing the word “newspapers” with “the internet” would not be a huge stretch at times.
I try to educate myself about what’s going on in the world whenever I can, but I’m not sure many of the popular online news outlets are doing a very good job. Take today for instance. With everything going on in the world, CNN.com chose to place the following headline at the top of the day’s news.
“Rapper Andre Johnson severs penis, jumps off building”
Hmm…I’m not sure what to make of that one.
CNN.com, like so many other online news outlets, has become nothing more than a sell-out – catering to the younger demographic advertisers crave with attention grabbing headlines and stories which have no business being called “news”. It’s become less about informing the public and more about public popularity; less about quality and more about sensationalism.
I think Oscar Wilde said it best: “The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing.”
So who’s really to blame here? The news outlets who provides society with the kind of “news” they crave, or members of society whose idea of “news” is a rapper with a severed penis?
