Finally Some {Good News}: Why You Should Never Watch Cable News Again

Hey friend. I’ve been meaning to talk to you. Because now that we’re all home 24/7, I noticed you’ve picked up a pretty unhealthy habit. I wasn’t going to say anything because I thought it would pass, but now, I realize I’d be a bad friend and a worse American if I didn’t intervene.

So, your cable news viewing. What’s that all about anyway?

Do you just really enjoy a constant barrage of doomsday scenarios? Do you love hysterical chyrons declaring the president’s latest tweet as BREAKING NEWS? Or is it more because you enjoy being targeted with direct to consumer pharmaceutical commercials, so that you—with no prior science or medical training—also develop medical school syndrome and think you might be dying?

I promise, you’re not dying. You’re just consuming for-profit media.

Back in the 90s, for-profit media was fun and sexy! Cable news was entertainment! It was big hair and good skin and enticing headlines. It sprung into a fast-growing enterprise that every major broadcast network wanted to get into, and then once they had their little media island, they multiplied into new channels, new personalities, and new shows.

Perhaps it started innocently enough, with little honest journalism majors getting into cable news and doing their very best to maintain the integrity of a Walter Cronkite. But unfortunately, partisanship and editorialization are easier and cheaper than investigative journalism. Frenzied crisis reporting sells more ads. And it’s easy to pretend you’re “just being a rational businessperson” if you chase ratings and ad dollars.

But what paid media has done—particularly cable news—is divide facts into “sides.”

But that math just doesn’t work. Truth is whole and round and enormous, no matter how you try to slice it.

But in cable news, there’s the CNN side and the FOX NEWS side, and never the twain shall meet. Both sides are righteous and indignant. Both sides are constantly outraged at the other’s irresponsible partisanship. Neither side can believe what the other side says.

As a result, the consumers of one-sided cable news have been hoodwinked: we’re blind in both eyes.

As individuals, watching those broadcasts makes us sour, angry, and polemic. Having your “news” framed for you—through your own political lens—makes you less discerning, informed, and attentive, and probably less capable of analysis.

News shouldn’t have heroes and villains, determined by their political leaning! News should have only good reporters and bad reporters, and the bad reporters should be shown the door. I don’t care how dramatic Don Lemon’s eye roll, or how frothy Sean Hannity’s spittle—neither man is an arbiter of real news, and therefore, both are equally useless as on-air personalities.

Those men are mascots for lazy, partisan reporting that is great for ratings but horrifically bad for our country.

What they have done is weaken democracy. Yes, it is that extreme and that bad. Because as an electorate, we have lost our ability to discern what is real and what is spin, or what is fact and what is opinion. To consume for-profit news, we have to pick sides. That means that both sides are wrong.

Because truthful reporting doesn’t have sides. Frankly, it doesn’t have an opinion on the matter. Honest, credible journalism plumbs issues in depth, provides full information, then leaves the consumer to think for themselves. That should be the end of the transaction. But unfortunately for Americans, the end of the transaction for cable news networks is with advertisers.

But I’ve got some good news, friend. And it’s called the PBS News Hour.

A one-hour public news broadcast, which doesn’t even break for commercials. Whose reporters interview politicians and people of power—from every political leaning—but trust you enough to interpret and frame their responses straight, no editorialized chaser. A team of reporters who care more about substance and investigative journalism than sensationalism. A show that’s willing to spend 12 minutes on difficult issues because not everything can be simplified into a chyron and because nuance isn’t just important—sometimes it’s the whole story.

It may not be exciting enough to sell ads for restless leg syndrome meds, but I promise, the PBS News Hour is the only tonic you need. This program is the truth.