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Wednesday, November 23, 2016

I Stopped Watching US News

When Trump got elected, I stopped watching US news and it confirmed to me that the US media and particularly the networks are not portraying the real state of the world.

In Virginia, news is big.  The local news starts at 4pm and runs to 6:30pm, then the national news comes on until 7pm or 7:30pm.  We used to start watching at 5pm while making dinner and continued until 7pm.  We got a pretty good sense of what the news programs were reporting and it is at least 90% negative and sensational - "if it bleeds, it leads".  Based on watching this news, you would think:

  1. Crime is increasing, particularly violent crime against innocent white people like blonde haired young women.
  2. Police are shooting black people regularly without provocation.
  3. Islamic terrorists are mounting attacks on the US regularly.
  4. Unemployment and poverty are very high.
  5. Opioid addiction is everywhere.
  6. Traffic accidents are more frequent than ever and people are dying in droves.  Cell phone usage is causing huge numbers of crashes.
  7. Infectious diseases like Ebola, Zika, Tuberculosis, and Lyme are sweeping the nation.  
  8. Governments at all levels are dysfunctional and do not serve their citizens.  The people in the government are evil.
In actual fact:
  1. Crime has decreased and violent crime particularly has decreased for the last 20 years.
  2. This does happen, but not frequently and usually the police are charged.
  3. You are more likely to be killed by lightning than an Islamic terrorist on average.  You are certainly more likely to die through medical malpractice than terrorism.
  4. Unemployment is at a very low level, the US is almost at full employment.  Poverty is quite low compared to the middle of the 20th century.
  5. This has some truth, opioid addiction is increasing and the "war on drugs" waged for 30+ years has achieved nothing.
  6. Traffic fatalities are at an all time low on a deaths per miles travelled basis.  Cell phones are a problem but not a big one yet.
  7. Nothing bad happened with Ebola despite all the hysteria, Zika is a problem that can be solved, etc.  With all the medical technology in the USA, its not a big issue.
  8. Governments are run by officials and civil servants who try to be helpful and mostly they succeed.
  9. Global warming by greenhouse gases generated by man is well supported by scientific analysis.  But in spite of the fact that this will decimate the whole world, it rarely gets reported because it is too hard to explain in 20 seconds and there is no sensational video to show in the background as the news reader intones on its gravity.

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