Anyone else think our country was better off before 24 "news" stations.

[Liberal Veteran]

That are filled with more opinion than news?

[hlthe2b]

1. Yup.... I'd trade 24 hour cable news for internet access to global

newspapers any day.

[movonne]

2. 24 hour news would be a good thing if it was 24 hour news.

[hlthe2b]

6. True.... Frankly I wish we had a BBC or CBC

with guaranteed Federal funding and sufficient protections to keep it independent from political manipulation.

[lapfog_1]

10. When CNN first started

It was much more 24 hour news... and the international hour
was great. Now it's just trying to emulate Fox. All cable
news now sucks. Big time.

[BootinUp]

3. I remember when news divisions always lost money

and the networks felt it was a public service.

[calico1]

4. Yes, absolutely.

I remember the days when news reporters were professional. They reported the news, did a lot of good investigative reporting and their goal seemed to be to get the real news to us, the viewers. Now with the 24 hour cable channels, you get all these idiots who want to be stars, who are enamored with themselves and who think their opinions are very important. Plus, because its 24 hours they fill up a lot of time with fluff and things that would never have gotten in the evening news years ago when the news was on once a day in the evening. More is not necessarily better. Certainly not in this case. And the caliber of reporters we have today are a joke compared to the real ones we had years ago. I feel bad for those of you who are too young to remember what a real reporter was because we had a lot of them. The clowns we have today never would have gotten a job, in my opinion--with few exceptions.

[Liberal Veteran]

7. Yeah. Even the "news shows" didn't really feature....

...the host showing 2 minutes of footage and then pontificating for 28 minutes on his opinion.

[Q]

5. They call it the 'news'...

...but it's actually 'infotainment'.

[Eric J in MN]

8. If a cable network had a linep of Bill Clinton, Howard Dean,

Phil Donahue, and Jeff Cohen (of FAIR, in "Outfoxed") then I'd like 24 hour news networks.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

9. Before CNN and Co, we had real news.

Since then, the Big Three Evening News Coverage has declined in quality to make a profit.

Cable "News" has set the bar very low and has hurt us.