On Television

It is important to have a media outlet whose motive is not profit.

Allowing for-profit media to supply us with our information, our young people with their education is a mistake. Why? For-profit networks are in one business: making money. They show the public what will make it happy, like the quest to become this year's American Idol, or man-on-the-street-interviews with up to the minute responses to the shocking outcome of the Michael Jackson case. They don't show is what we need to know, like the story of the woman who was gang-raped in Pakistan as a punishment for a crime that her twelve-year-old brother committed, and is currently being denied the ability to travel to America to speak out about it. They don't show stories about that because suddenly your need to try the new flavor of toothpaste or test drive the new model of SUV with lowlow interest rate pales in comparison to this woman's plight for gender equality, for social justice. Instead, we watch tanned/plucked/cosmetic surgeried/slim/"sexy" news anchors who have never been to Iraq smile over stories about waterskiing squirrels, Tom Cruise's latest engagement, and America's latest "victory" in Iraq. They gloss over the 2-3 suicide bombings a day, they don't report the stories of our soldiers who were supposed to be through with their service that are now being sucked back into combat through the stop-loss back door and are killed in combat for a war they were not supposed to be a part of. They don't tell us that in two years our public broadcasting organizations will likely be left on their own to sink or swim.