Just my (sometimes) humble opinion…

News outlets have always had a point of view. Nowadays, the dullest among us call it bias, as if it’s a bad thing. It’s not. It may not have been as blatant as it has become (I’m talking to you, CNN), but it’s always been present. Editorial choices and content – even Walter Cronkite’s – have always been made with the bias of the outlet.

No, what’s different is the news approach back when it was worth paying attention to was, “Here’s what happened and here’s what it probably meant.” Today, it tends to be “Here’s what *might* happen and here what it might mean if it did.” It’s a direct consequence of the not-really-needed 24/7 news cycle.

The real business of news is to sell eyeballs to advertisers. And it’s a lot harder to do that when you have so much dead air to fill where nothing is really happening. So what passes for news today is largely speculation, not reporting, and speculation by people who largely don’t know a damn thing about whatever it is they are prattling on about.

It’s distinctly uninteresting to me.