This may be the first of several posts on the degeneration of “news” into speculative, gossip-focused, entertaining drivel. They – and you – pretend you are being informed when in reality you are being entertained. At best your time is distracted from learning meaningful information and at worse you have become prey for propaganda messaging.

Visit the web pages of various news sites and note the majority of their “headlines” are entertaining gossip stories.

Yahoo News:

• “Vonn: Backlash shows ‘how divided we are now'”
• “And Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is…
• How 1 tiny signature cost Greg Schiano $27 million
• 10 stunning photos of Ellen’s new home
• San Francisco mayor dead at 65
• Jaguars take swift action against fans in ugly melee
• Daredevil ‘Rooftopper’ Plunges 62 stories to his death
• Watch: CNN’s Don Lemon, Branded ‘Dumbest Man’ on TV by Trump, Lost for words at Kayla Moor’es Cringe…
• Roy Moore Reemerges for an Election-Eve Rally, and Good Lord, Was it Weird

May be 2 are “objective” journalism of any importance.

MSN:

• Metal Building Insulation (is actually a sponsored ad made to look like a news report, in the headline spot!)
• Suzanna Leigh, who co-started with Elvis Presley, dies at 72
• Boy in viral bullying video speaks out as mom faces backlash
• Matt Lauer is ‘fighting to save’ his marriage: source
• Schwarzeneggar calls out Trump in stunt
• Twitter goes bonkers for Dolphin’s throwback uniforms
• Daredevil dies doing pullups off a skycraper in China
• (way down the page, after ads and other “stuff”, news resumes)
  13th human foot washes ashore in Canada; residents seem unfazed
• NYPD official: It’s “getting harder” to stop lone wolf attacks
• Photos of the Day
• Appliance Parts Fast – Huge selection of appliance parts. (sponsored ad in the list of headlines)

Local TV Station KPTV’s Web Site

These headlines are primarily reporting on the daily noise of city life. A week from now, or more likely tomorrow, we will doubtfully remember even one of these stories.

Local TV news is entertainment that occupies your time while your eyeballs and ears are leased to advertisers. They – and you – pretend you are becoming informed. But you are not. The majority of these “news reports” are useless drivel.

Most news is entertainment. It does not inform you of much. In fact, it distracts from time spent on delivering substantive subjects to you, which requires your thinking skills to process. Local news (and most national news too) is keyed towards being entertaining. In the 1980s, the term “infotainment” was created to describe television news – literally information delivery, often dramatized, as a form of entertainment.

This model is what drives almost all news reporting in the United States.

Pointless news reports are the starting point for conversations on social media as these reports are Shared, Liked and Commented upon. Some, especially when political entertainment news is Shared, become the root cause of the “culture of outrage” prevalent on social media. Each of us receives a daily onslaught of this “noise”, typically bending our internal emotions out of shape, and for some, leading to anxiety, depression and anger.

Social media becomes the amplifier of media nonsense. And none of this is good for our mental health.