An Open Letter to CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and Fox News:
Topic: You Call This News?
I need some guidance because I have obviously missed some crucial moment in our country's zeitgeist. When did it come to pass that television journalism ceased to be credible and became nothing more than partisan lobbying? When did the legacy of Murrow, Cronkite, and Brinkley become, with very few exceptions, the domain of News Readers whose only apparent expertise is mugging for the camera while reading dogmatic press releases like they were the canon of the gospels? When did our "Custodians of the Truth" become complicit in validating rumor, ad hoc attacks, and hearsay at the behest of devious political leaders?

It amazes me that this presidential election will not be decided on the critical issues but rather on childish facial expressions and out of context soundbites. We, the voting public are being force fed daily proclamations on which candidate leads in polls without regard to their scientific credibility and in many cases totally ignoring the mathematical margin of error. How exactly this daily dose of distortion furthers our democratic process is anyone's guess save that the election for the most power man in the world is based less on the Jeffersonian ideal and more on "American Idol" criterion. Our next President will come to power without any of the major television news outlets doing anything other then regurgitating predigested factional soundbites. Have we as a country become that illiterate and shallow?

I am frank to say that the major television news networks should take a page from professional wrestling and rename themselves "News Entertainment". It is a disgrace that presumably plausible news anchors must refer people to www.factcheck.org ! It was my, (perhaps na?ve), impression that it was the their obligation to provide in depth reporting on distortions of issues and misrepresentations of the facts.

The American electorate is not without culpability in this. We as a country have become apathetic followers who would rather have dogmatic spin doctors bottle feed us our opinions rather then make the effort to assume our civic duty, (an antiquated concept I know), and educate ourselves on the real issues. I strongly suspect that the majority of our voting public has never actually read the platforms of either party or expanded their respective ideology beyond that of a single issue agenda.

It is a disgrace to every brave soldier who ever laid down their life in the name of liberty and freedom that their sacrifice has been reduced to the importance of "rock, paper, scissors" politics. We as a country should be mortified at our apathy and media journalists should be ashamed of their own self-absorbed hubris.

At the end of the day we as a people deserve the incompetent and spurious government we get.