Real News Left Behind
It was 10:10 on Sunday evening, and I decided to see what the leading?news stories were on CNN?s and Fox?s respective websites. Having seen Yahoo News? top story being about Tiger Woods? car accident the other day, I suspected I knew what the answer was. Turns out, I was right. The stories were in spots designed to get major, first–or-second-glance attention.
Now, to be fair, Fox and CNN also had big stories about the police shooting (both), a woman who is helping women get mammograms (CNN), a story about AIDS guidelines (Fox) and Fox had its required “Support a Republican” story about Senator Lugar (R-IN) and his?thoughts about delaying health care reform until?”next year, the same way we put cap and trade and climate change, and talk now about the essentials: the war and money.” However, Fox had the Woods “story” on its top four list on its site, and CNN had it first on its “Latest News” list. (Oddly enough, MSNBC had the Woods “story” listed as third in its Sports section, and I actually missed it the first two times I scanned the page. MSNBC’s main section covered the police shootings, the economy, Afghanistan, Detroit’s economic needs, where investors are focusing this week and the Steelers-Ravens game. Not too bad for a liberal rag of a “news” source.)
Money drives news, as it should- news needs money to survive, after all- but once again our news is showing just how misplaced American priorities and dollars are. Stories that cover Honduras, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, China, the recession, the police shootings, health care reform efforts and other important news should be at the top of the list the vast majority of the time. Instead, they are pushed aside by non-news and entertainment.
This is an old rant, and says nothing new (except that MSNBC actually did a good job at something). Should those of us who care keep hammering at America’s lack of real world knowledge and news awareness, or are we wasting our time? Will we as a nation pull our heads out of *the clouds* and at least try to be aware of the world around us? Please?
Honduran Crisis Resolved?
Last week there was a major breakthrough on the Honduran crisis- the New York Times reports that a US-sent team helped create a compromise where Zelaya would return to power but not run in the upcoming elections. The deal still must be approved by the Honduran Congress, but it has the potential to do a great deal of good for the situation.
Of course, this leads to several questions:
1. Why wasn’t this done in the first place? The presumptuous decision by the administration to not send a team, or do any real investigative work in looking closely at this strict following of the Honduran constitution, until so recently makes them seem like they don’t know what they are doing on foreign policy.
2. Will Senator Kerry (D-MA), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, apologize to the Library of Congress for asking them to take back their report? The report is at odds with the administration’s and many Democrats’ stances on the Honduran crisis.
3. Why is the United States pressing for this as the final resolution? Zelaya broke the law, and the rule of law is, you know, the law. The same Congress that will have to vote on this agreement is the one that voted Zelaya out of power. So now we respect that Congress’ decisions?
4. What happened to non-interventionist policies?
Overall, this is a better-than-most situation; the people of Honduras will get the international support they lacked during the crisis, Zelaya gets to feel powerful for about five weeks, and the United States gets a tiny bit of credit for doing SOMETHING partially right on foreign policy for about the first time this year. Let’s just hope Zelaya doesn’t try anything else- both for Honduras and for this country’s foreign policy credentials.
