Courtesy TheLedger.com (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, Pool)
America Is Not The Greatest Country In The World? This is how I start? Yes. This is my very first blog post (well, first post for this site, and for any site in quite a while). I guess I should make it count. Music. Life. Social. To kick things off, I’ll talk about Life… in these United States. Wait, there’s a scene from one of my all-time favorite TV shows, The Newsroom, that is relevant to this discussion. I bet I can it find on YouTube…. Hold on… Ah, here we go…
America is not the greatest country in the world anymore. Yeah, the country is messed up. And, guess what? “The News” (referring to all the media that reports on it) is messed up, too. Now, this isn’t exactly breaking news. But what if I told you the country is messed up because the news is messed up? And yes, this is my opinion—but it’s an informed one. Let me take a moment to explain.
Today, the line between truth and opinion in the media is more blurred than ever. As a result, many people are questioning the reliability of the news they watch. One quote from The Unit, another favorite show of mine, sums it up perfectly: “There is no truth in the news, and there is no news in the truth.” This quote speaks to a reality many Americans now face. In fact, this idea was first put forward in 1991 by Conor O’Clery, during the fall of the Soviet Union, when he wrote: “In the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth.” [Sidebar: The Truth and The News were major publications in the USSR.] This idea may have been born in a different era, but it still applies today, especially with the rise of cable news and social media.
Not long ago, news was just news. Journalists simply informed the public, without turning their reports into personal opinions. Back in the day, when we tuned into CBS, NBC, or ABC for updates, we knew we were getting straightforward, factual information. Opinion was reserved for specific segments, and it was always clearly labeled. But now, the news has become a business, shaped by advertisers and specific audiences, which distorts the purpose of journalism.
This shift is dangerous because it weakens the role of the press as the “Fourth Estate,” a crucial part of democracy. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” And who’s responsible for educating the public? The news media! It’s time for the media to go back to its roots and focus on reporting the facts. The public deserves, at the very least, one reliable news source that puts truth before entertainment and facts before bias. Until that happens, the health of our democracy—and our understanding of the world—will remain in danger. But knowing that America is not the greatest country in the world anymore, and that fixing “The News” is a critical first step toward its return to greatness, gets our heads on straight; and facing in the right direction.