What Rubs You the Wrong/Right Way About News Media?

The 'talking heads' analysing the story to death.

I want the facts - not their slant on the facts. I don't like being 'told' how to think, feel, or react to a news story. I can figure it out for myself.

It's almost as annoying as the laugh tracks on a sit-com.

There's too much exaggeration.

News!

1.Lack of real world news reporting apart form famines and droughts. The African continent, other Asian countries beyond China, are news worthy too.
2. The belief that only disasters are news.
3. The fact that news media are in fact owned by a very few. The news is controlled and manipulated.
4. News is information and not entertainment. There's a need for explanations and in depth discussions not the glib slick 5 second rubbish we usually get.
5. News is not propaganda and there are always at least two sides to every news item but only the 'establishment' one (as decreed by the media owners) is ever shown.
6. The news media belief that by repeating something loudly and on every news broadcast means that it is true.
7. The sensational rubbish that passes as news, pop stars' knickers or sports players' tantrums are news?

The increasing evidence that the editorial staff does not have spell check. This really aggravates me! more and more miss-spelled words every day.
These are supposed to be professionals.
If they are rushing their writing, I feel that they are rushing their stories.

Bad grammar. Bad grammar. Bad grammer. I hate the fact that many media people do not have a good grasp of the english language. The use of words in the wrong context makes it look like they don't know the word they are using. Bad grammar is just lazy, no proofreading.

It also really bothers me when they provide wrong information. I'm not talking opinions, but rather incorrect factual information.

a lot of reporters are Democrat and they always slant the news to make President Bush sound horrible....

always blaming the Republicans and President Bush for everything.....they manage to twist any news item right in the lead.

Bias annoys me unless it's upfront (which is rare.) I dislike the hypocrisy of a media outlet which purports to be objective, yet consistently slants its articles, columns and editorials in one direction.

1. Too much fluff, not enough hard news.
2. Same stale stories over and over, as if nothing else was happening in the world.
3. Ignoring completely many stories from other parts of the world.
4. Commentators and newsreaders who say "nucular" instead of "nuclear". Aaargh!

For me, I'm kind of sick and tired of always hearing about every single death being reported from Iraq (at least as far as US soldiers). Not that they don't deserve recognition, but why does the news media always "ignore" the good stuff those soldiers are trying to do?

I remember when I was deployed to Kosovo, when 9/11 happened, holy cow did the entire world almost literally come to a standstill. I bet many people automatically assumed "All Muslims are evil because of this", and probably showed reaction from the Palestinian areas, Iraq, Iran, etc.

Funny thing was, the Kosovar Albanians living nearby our camp held pro-US rallies to show support for us (they are also Muslims btw). I don't recall hearing much about stuff like this at all, but since it doesn't fit neatly into Mr. Bin Laden's hate messages, the medias decide it's not news worthy.

I wish they'd always stop focusing so much on the bad stuff, and show the "good stuff" more often. While it's tragic that Soldier #2346 (after a while they just become a number to most people I bet, other than those who knew the soldier personally. Btw, 2,000 deaths is a small number, the British suffered some 58,000 casualties in one day of fighting during the battle of the Somme in World War 1), why degrade their sacrifice by ignoring that time they helped to rebuild a school, or trying to keep the peace so that the Iraqis could go and vote freely, and give most Iraqi's a sense of freedom and democracy (that was one of the reasons why we went there right? I know, it's not the only one, but still, since we're there, might as well be helpful).

Anyway, that's my rant. The media likes focusing on bad stuff all the time, they ignore the good stuff or other issues (then there's the Jessica Lynch stuff. She's not the only soldier who was captured you know, yet the media has given her way more coverage than she really deserves, and I think they even made a TV movie about that too. Yet all those other soldiers who were killed or captured don't get much recognition. I guess they don't bring in as much ratings as miss Lynch did).