Newsworthy

We recently saw a clip from Sarah Palin's recent appearance on the Tonight Show. At one point she says she dislikes mainstream media, even spouting Fox News' (now obsolete) catchphrase "Fair and Balanced."

Putting aside that Fox News is neither fair nor balanced, neither is pretty much all of the "news" on cable. For that matter, so much of what's on the major networks is so sensational and driven by ratings, that real journalism is in scarce supply -- particularly on television.

Gone are the days of Walter Cronkite and Edward R Murrow. More than a generation later, news anchors don't report the news. On the rare occasion that a genuine, professional journalist feeds a decent piece of objective news into the studio, it's so mashed up with the opinions of producers, anchors and owners that it's almost unrecognizable as journalism by the time it shows up on screen.

All too often it happens in radio and print journalism as well, but it seems that television newscasts, particularly cable television newscasts are nothing more than a long line of pundits who are willing to say exactly what the network executives want us to hear.

So much for drawing our own conclusions about the world around us.