The National Enquirer, with its catchy slogan, "Enquiring minds want to know," has been dubbed the original "fake news." Though it is now a shell of its former self, it once made tons of money with its tabloid news headlines, such as, "Beware, Your Alarm Clock Can Kill You" and "Al Gore's Diet is Making Him Stupid." While there were tidbits of truth in the publication—Al Gore was stupid—there were also tons of lies—it wasn't Gore's diet that was making him dumb. Despite its sensationalism it was grabbed up by supermarket shoppers in checkout lines like cheap candy bars.  

Today's mainstream news networks are far more like the National Enquirer than they are the old CBS News with Walter Cronkite, who always ended his nightly news broadcast with his assurance: "And that's the way it is." Granted, plenty of Americans, like Archie Bunker and my dear old dad, felt like "Comie Cronkite" couldn't be trusted to tell it like it was. Still, despite viewers' heathy suspicion that their nightly news might be subtly spun or tantalizingly tilted one way or another, news networks were at least sensitive to preserving some semblance of avoiding sensationalism, sticking to the facts, and strictly covering the important news of the day.

With the advent of twenty-four hour cable news networks and their vying against one another for ratings, everything changed. All that twenty-four hour a day airtime had to be filled with sensational things, which would bait the audience, rather than factual things, which might bore the audience. Furthermore, each network had to zero in on its targeted patrons, by perpetually pandering to their particular prejudices. Therefore, what passes for news today is sensationalized stories slanted to keep select viewers tantalized and tuned in. Of course, this explains why this present news cycle is obsessed with Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show and Savannah Guthrie's missing mother, Nancy. Now, don't get me wrong, Nancy Guthrie's apparent abduction from her home in Tucson, Arizona is truly a tragedy, but does it really warrant being the lead story on every newscast in America for the last eleven days? 

When you couple with the above the facts that investigative journalism is practically dead in America today, that most of our present-day press is no longer a watchdog for the American people, but a lapdog for the Democratic Party, and that our mainstream media is far more interested in indoctrinating and entertaining us rather than informing and educating us, you realize that what passes for news today is mostly melodrama and mind control.