Current Events
I know this blog runs back and forth between opinion/personal diary type content and, well, just mouthy ranting, but I thought for a moment I'd take a look at some current events and give just a brief opinion on them and the sites that report them. Why? Because I want to. So let's take a little tour of some news websites and see what they're biggest stories are, shall we?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14846353/
MSNBC.com's top story of the moment is about the pope's "offensive" remarks about Muslims and how outraged the muslim community is. Aww, are the religious people mad at each other? This reminds me of the around the clock news coverage of the previous pope's death. It's what I call sheep news, news with no real purpose but to draw a click from your average sheep. The gist of the whole story can be summed up in three sentences. The pope said something bad about muhammad. Muslims are mad. Pope's people say he didn't mean it, honest!
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/09/15/tainted.spinach
CNN.com seems to be going for the "scare em into clicking" top news story with a report about an Ecoli outbreak from bagged spinach. I can't fault this story, though, because this is something I think SHOULD be reported and I have to give props to CNN for at least bumping it above the Pope's anti-muslim remarks!
http://www.foxnews.com/
Fox news takes a little different approach. They "feature" three news stories on their main page, complete with picture and bolded text, whereas both CNN and MSNBC go for the one main feature story. Fox's choice in stories? Well, they've got both the Ecoli and Pope story, plus an extra on the current violence in Iraq. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,213921,00.html Though I still think the pope story is nowhere near front page material, I at least give Fox credit for making him share the spotlight with Ecoli and that little war we've been fighting for a few years now.
http://abcnews.go.com/
ABC runs a rotating animation of a few top stories. They've got the Ecoli breakout, Ford cutting employee numbers http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=2447301, convicted killer Robert/Michelle Kosilek wanting the state to pay for her sex change http://abcnews.go.com/US/LegalCenter/story?id=2440310&page=1, Justin Timberlake's appearance on Good Morning America's fall concert series http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/FallConcert/, and of course the ever important question of "Should fashion designers have the ability to copyright their designs?"
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=2442802&page=1 Obviously the Timberlake story is nothing but a thinly veiled advertisement for their concert series, which doesn't suprise me considering their site has popup ads on nearly every page. Note that ABC seems to have missed the pope's remarks altogether, or they don't consider them front page material! Sadly they also seem to consider fashion designer copyright and an ad for their concert series more important "news" than the war in Iraq.
http://www.cbsnews.com/
CBS deems the pope the top story of the day, worthy of bolded headline and large picture. CBS also has a different take on how to annoy their readers with ads. First, the top half of their page is a giant ad with a "close ad" button in the top left corner. Oh! But the ad doesn't really "close" it just shrinks to a banner ad that randomly "opens" itself to cover half the page again. Even if I wanted to get my news from this site I wouldn't put up with that annoying ad long enough to bother! That's even more annoying than msnbc's cruddy "fly-out" menus along the side. At least those you can disable.
Well, that's my little tour of the news sites. Yeah, I didn't particularly say much, but oh well. It's Friday!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14846353/
MSNBC.com's top story of the moment is about the pope's "offensive" remarks about Muslims and how outraged the muslim community is. Aww, are the religious people mad at each other? This reminds me of the around the clock news coverage of the previous pope's death. It's what I call sheep news, news with no real purpose but to draw a click from your average sheep. The gist of the whole story can be summed up in three sentences. The pope said something bad about muhammad. Muslims are mad. Pope's people say he didn't mean it, honest!
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/09/15/tainted.spinach
CNN.com seems to be going for the "scare em into clicking" top news story with a report about an Ecoli outbreak from bagged spinach. I can't fault this story, though, because this is something I think SHOULD be reported and I have to give props to CNN for at least bumping it above the Pope's anti-muslim remarks!
http://www.foxnews.com/
Fox news takes a little different approach. They "feature" three news stories on their main page, complete with picture and bolded text, whereas both CNN and MSNBC go for the one main feature story. Fox's choice in stories? Well, they've got both the Ecoli and Pope story, plus an extra on the current violence in Iraq. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,213921,00.html Though I still think the pope story is nowhere near front page material, I at least give Fox credit for making him share the spotlight with Ecoli and that little war we've been fighting for a few years now.
http://abcnews.go.com/
ABC runs a rotating animation of a few top stories. They've got the Ecoli breakout, Ford cutting employee numbers http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=2447301, convicted killer Robert/Michelle Kosilek wanting the state to pay for her sex change http://abcnews.go.com/US/LegalCenter/story?id=2440310&page=1, Justin Timberlake's appearance on Good Morning America's fall concert series http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/FallConcert/, and of course the ever important question of "Should fashion designers have the ability to copyright their designs?"
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=2442802&page=1 Obviously the Timberlake story is nothing but a thinly veiled advertisement for their concert series, which doesn't suprise me considering their site has popup ads on nearly every page. Note that ABC seems to have missed the pope's remarks altogether, or they don't consider them front page material! Sadly they also seem to consider fashion designer copyright and an ad for their concert series more important "news" than the war in Iraq.
http://www.cbsnews.com/
CBS deems the pope the top story of the day, worthy of bolded headline and large picture. CBS also has a different take on how to annoy their readers with ads. First, the top half of their page is a giant ad with a "close ad" button in the top left corner. Oh! But the ad doesn't really "close" it just shrinks to a banner ad that randomly "opens" itself to cover half the page again. Even if I wanted to get my news from this site I wouldn't put up with that annoying ad long enough to bother! That's even more annoying than msnbc's cruddy "fly-out" menus along the side. At least those you can disable.
Well, that's my little tour of the news sites. Yeah, I didn't particularly say much, but oh well. It's Friday!
posted by Ayanla at 6:08 AM
1 Comments:
Here is an interesting article which entails the muslimic backlash from the Pope's comments, and of course his roundabout apology.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/09/18/pope.islam.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories
I do not think that people are as concerned about the Middle East as they should be. The events that are transpiring, in addition to the comments by the Pope, are pushing towards an Islamic unification in my opinion. Yes right now they are waring with each other, I understand this, but they (being the great majority of the Islamic faith) are also very anti-west, and very extreme.
So many things that are going on at once over there that are leading to the inevitable, third world war. It is a bit frightening to a degree, with a country that is nearing completion of a nuclear program, which adamently supports Islamic extremist, the results of which can be very devastating, even to the lands of our own.
The US currently carries next to no political pressure on these countries, to enact some form of counter balance. And that is scary considering that the US is for the most part the only super-power remaining in the world. Our involvement in Iraq has done nothing but kill influence with other Arab nations, vital to the balance of power in the Middle East.
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