Rant #2,515: Talk Talk

I wake up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and then I go on the computer to compose my daily Rant.
 
After I turn on the computer, I click onto Google Chrome, and the first thing that opens up is my Yahoo home page.
 
I take a glance at the “headlines” and move on, but I know that many people use their Yahoo home page as their main source for news, which based on the “headlines” that you find there, is quite alarming.
 
Today, the lead story when I turned on the computer and went to the home page was “Secret Weapon Gives GOP Hope For Election Day,” related to voter registration tallies showing that the Republicans have narrowed the gap in three key states for the upcoming presidential election.
 
OK, I can buy that as a lead story, but what followed next … I mean, even with the lower expectations of “news” these days, could you imagine your local newspaper, your local TV or radio news, or the nightly network news covering these stories as “news?”
 
Here are some of the headlines, and remember, millions of people use Yahoo news as their only resource for the news of the day:
 
“Trump Reportedly Invited a Waiter Into a Top Secret Intelligence Briefing Room To Order a Milkshake”
 
“Porn Stars Are Terrified of Amy Coney Barrett”
 
“The Queen Reportedly hut Down Prince Harry’s Demand That Meghan Markle Get Her Way On Her Wedding Day”
 
“Naked and Proud: 17 Body-Positive Photos of Ashley Graham We Can’t Stop Looking At”
 
“Kim Kardashian Tells David Letterman She Was Warned ‘Don’t You Dare Step Foot In That White House Or Your Reputation Is Done’”
 
And this group is only five of dozens of “headlines” that I could have listed here.
 
There were others about a pregnant woman “setting the Internet ablaze” with a run; rapper 50 Cent stating “I don’t care that Trump doesn’t like black people,” and some YouTube celebrity yelling at his wife in front of their children.
 
And I could go on and on and on …
 
But no Elizabeth Hurley bikini pictures today, I’m afraid.
 
Well, is this the national news or the National Enquirer?
 
We have spoken about this subject before at this blog, but the Yahoo home page is more comical than newsworthy, but it pains me that so many people get their news from this site, and only from this site.
 
Can you imagine the vaulted New York Times having a news headline about model Ashley Graham and her latest array of pictures?
 
Can you imagine Nora O’Donnell on the CBS Evening News leading off the half hour newscast with a story about a YouTuber yelling at his spouse?
 
I mean, if you read the Times and if you watch the CBS News show, yes, we are almost at that point in news reporting, but we are not quite there yet …
 
But we are closer than you might think we are at getting to that point.
 
With TMZ being a major source of news in this day and age, you just know that we aren’t that far away from the ‘yellow journalism” that we were all taught about in school, where stories are fabricated and not necessarily true, and are created to frame a viewpoint rather than report the news as it happens.
 
We are getting there when the graphics on the nightly news shows Trump and Biden, with Biden’s photo on the left, larger and move inviting than the current president’s photo on the right. It should be the other way around.
 
We are getting there when presidential ads from both candidates run on network news, one particular one running after a news report about new TV ads released from one of the candidates.
 
We are getting there when the news media is so biased and so determined to show how “inclusive” it is that it elevates one race over another in the very way that it handles and prints the race of one group over another.
 
And that is sad, really sad, because these instances are helping to shape thoughts the wrong way, telling us what to think rather than allowing us to think for ourselves.
 
So the next time you see a Yahoo headline that reads something like “Elizabeth Hurley Shows Off Her 50-Something Body Yet Again in a Tiny Swimsuit,” you can laugh all you want … I know that I do.
 
But the laughs should also turn to concern, because this is what we are being fed as “news,” and it simply isn’t.
 
Remember the saying “all the news that’s fit to print?”
 
The more important one is “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and if that is the case, we are all being killed by how news is handled today by supposedly reputable outlets.
 
That might be news to some, but we should all be aware how our minds and thoughts are being manipulated by lazy reporting of things are about as newsworthy as “the sky is falling.”
 
Maybe, just maybe, Chicken Little was right.