Time was the only way you could get any national news information was through the television set.  Well, technically, you still had newspapers, but they were static information, meaning they had to go to press early the night before, so “breaking news,” as it has come to being called, was not available until the next morning’s delivery.

I wax romantic about newspapers, sometimes, because one of my favorite activities was the cup of coffee with the Sunday paper, especially on cold winter mornings, but that’s not the point of this story.

The advent of the 24-hour news programming was a welcome sight in its infancy, but even the old network news associations would break in to normal everyday programming if something big was happening.  But now, with the proliferation of cable television and a multitude of channels from which to choose, the networks sort of abdicated the coverage of news events to the cable media.

Major network news shows have now become more like the local channels news programming, with a smattering of national stories, but more of what used to be called “fluff pieces,” focusing more on celebrities and human interest stories.  Even the morning shows just touch on the major events, and lean toward to tabloid-type coverage, which I guess is what the majority of the public wants to see, or else they would not be doing it.

But cable news took a wrong turn somewhere along the way, the channels that survived and grew, morphed in to opinion vehicles, either for the left or the right, and even a report on a “breaking news” event now contains verbiage that leans in one direction or the other.  I understand they are playing to their base, but it makes it difficult to get an even-handed understanding of the actual facts, when they are presented with a political slant.