I'll make this brief. I didn't watch the debate last night. Judging by the reaction, I'm glad. Honestly folks, what did you you expect? To hear fair, interesting questions about issues like poverty and social security and the environment followed by long, insightful answers?
No, that's SUBSTANCE. Substance don't SELL.
The fact is ABC does not exist to inform voters. ABC exists to make its shares go up. And every time you watch, you help.
But it's not just ABC. It's ALL OF THEM.
It's in every corporate media outlet's best interests for this election to---
A) last as long as possible
B) be as ugly as possible
thus leading to---
C) sell as much advertising as possible
Television media does not exist for the 22 minutes out of every 30 devoted to programming. Television media exists for the 8 minutes devoted to ads. There are 5 cable news networks and 3 nightly news broadcasts. If they don't give you the most interesting product, they lose to the others and thus can't charge as much for their adspace. If the only important thing that happened today was something dry, it's worthless. If something unimportant but more entertaining happened, that gets the programming space. Their goal is to hook you, not inform you. Therefore, they're going to give you the filthiest crap they can scrape from the bottom of the dirtiest barrel, so that they might get an edge.
Don't boycott ABC. Boycott ALL of them. Turn OFF your TV. Yeah, I know it's entertaining. I know it's easier than reading a blog and part of you still thinks news only counts if a fool with nice hair is reading it off a teleprompter, but times have changed.
The blogs are a far superior outlet of information, albeit not when we focus on the distractions the MSM feeds us (which is an interesting topic in itself). When we talk about Tuzla and Reverend Wright, the MSM wins, but when we talk about the war and the economy, democracy wins, because that's voters focusing on things that matter.
So if you want the national discourse to focus on substance, stop spending your precious time supporting mediums that cater to the lowest common denominator and start supporting mediums that make you smarter.
Remember: EVERY MINUTE YOU WATCH, YOU'RE HELPING THEM.