Thursday, August 13, 2026

3rd Grade News

I always like how Trump called the news the Fake News.  Because in some ways he's kind of correct.  I understand not everyone in the population has the mental capacity to read very much (or the free time or interest for that matter), but the choice of articles, and the choice of headlines in particular, are often quite abysmal in order to generate clicks.  They really do seem to be intended, not always to be false as Trump implies, but always to be FAR over-simplified to little more than a catchy slogan that leaves a whole lot of relevant facts out of the account.  Both the left wing and right wing media are very guilty of this.  Probably not EVERY piece of media has this fault, like local newspapers for instance, but online stuff like Yahoo news and the articles it links to often fit this description to a T.  Fox news probably as well, although I haven't paid attention to them in a while.  But I remember in the past they'd take small sound bytes and run with them as if they said as much as a dissertation.

So I think I'd rather call it 3rd Grade News than Fake News, because it simplifies things too much, where maybe some of the facts are accurate, but they leave out a lot of relevant information to paint a false impression.  I think Lisa Simpson said it best when she said, "As usual, the playground gets the facts right, but misses the point entirely."

I guess the news does what it can to generate revenue and keep afloat.  I know I sure as heck don't like to think deeply about politics much in my time away from work, and I don't blame anyone else for not wanting to either.

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