Some Random Thoughts At The Cusp Of The New Year

Why have local TV news readers become so free with their horseshit opinions on the stories they've just read?

It is simply too difficult to pick the worst offenders from Chicago's television news outlets because they ALL have reached the point of ad nauseam comment. There was a time -- before news became entertainment -- that TV anchors and scene reporters put everything into getting the facts fast and straight.

Now, it is sickening to see and hear these personalities "come off the paper" to blurb their pathetic subjective reactions to each news spot every day and night.

"Well, let's hope police can get to the bottom of this case," "Yes, Susan, this was an awful tragedy," and "No, Dian, I don't think anything quite like this has every happened here before" are common variants of this Toob Boob Syndrome.

A related violation takes the form of the "turn and blurb," in which anchors engage in compulsory acts of chair swiveling to comment stupidly to an on-air colleague about whatever.

Who ever told these idiots that they were supposed to do anything other than read the words of the damned story? What in the hell ever gave them, and their directors and producers, the idea that anyone in the audience cared one snot about the opinion of the reporter, much less the on-air reader? What ever happened to the journalistic dictate that reporters gather facts and report only the facts that they have gathered? ... And that while they may have personal opinions, they MUST KEEP THEM TO THEMSELVES!

TV news people: If you want to comment, get your own marquis commentary spot or write a signed newspaper opinion column. You sound like a bunch of self-important blubbering idiots telling people what you think when what you say amounts to nothing more than some manipulative formulaic patter intended, but failing, to fool people into believing that you are some kind of experts in the subject matter of the news.

Face it, you are talking heads. You don't know anything you haven't been told, so quit trying to pass off your ignorance as insight. You would be pitiable, if you weren't so egregious about it.