When did we let Fox News and CNN become our political parties? | Opinion
Even a little kid can pull back the curtain on the current state of public affairs in America: News networks have replaced political parties. You either belong to the Fox National Political Party or the MSNBC/CNN National Political Party.
Fox News Channel is attracting more prime-time viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined. Celebrity news hosts making millions for the billionaires who own them. They’ve cornered this market. One side is hate-mongering and the other reacts with little substance, because it, too, wants the ratings more than they want change.
Meanwhile 330 million Americans are held hostage by the thoughts, actions and words of cable TV news. People don’t have to read anymore, they don’t have to leave their living rooms to participate. Civic engagement today is defined as: Watch Fox or MSNBC/CNN, get all your news from social media, then repeat what you see as your own original thought.
Then when some lost soul loses all sense of reality and does great harm to others, this society that we created hides its hands away from the cookie jar. All of this is possible because real people don’t matter, real issues don’t matter. It’s all entertainment and a circus — until people are killed. When a modern-day P.T. Barnum is the ringmaster who holds himself blameless, he’s accomplished the greatest disappearing act of all.
The shooter in Dayton, Ohio, killed his sister, reportedly because she was dating a black man, then went on to kill six other African Americans. In total, nine are dead and 27 were injured there. Fortunately the Dayton police were able to stop him from entering a nightclub that would have resulted in numerous of fatalities.
The shooter in El Paso was motivated by race as well. His hate was for people who speak Spanish. He didn’t care if they were American citizens or not. Twenty people were killed and 26 were injured, authorities have said.
On the final day of the renowned Gilroy Garlic Festival in California, where families were spending the day listening to music and celebrating the town’s world-famous crop, three people — 6-year-old Stephen Romero, 13-year-old Keyla Salazar and 25-year-old Trevor Irby — were killed. Sixteen people were wounded.
In the days weeks and months ahead, that tragic week will fade. There will be another mass shooting, but the more we allow our activism to be controlled by cable news, the more we are sanction inaction.
Instead, try books. Pick up one. Read several sources for news: mainstream, local, global. Read blogs, social media and real journalists. Get away from the algorithm that’s just giving you what you want, rather than the information that may not fit squarely within your “likes.”
If you’re a Republican, join your local party. If you’re a Democrat, do the same. If you’re an independent, then join an organization that speaks to your political philosophy.
But enough of the two-party cable news parties. Stop being an easy target for the Russians to exploit They don’t need no guns or another Cold War. They just need to use American exceptionalism to their advantage.
Read more than 140 or 280 characters at a time — it’s really cool, America!
Christopher Norwood is spokesperson for the Democratic Black Caucus of Florida, a member of the Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee and principal of The Norwood Consulting Group.
This story was originally published August 5, 2019 at 9:03 PM.