After 9/11 I stopped watching television. I unplugged the cable and stopped reading American news. I was disgusted. The sensationalism that had been happening was nothing compared to what that day brought on. No respect for human suffering. No respect for the dead. It was one big sweeps event, with each channel trying to outdo each other with pictures and video of people dying while trying to escape the fire. People dead on the ground. Replaying video of the planes as they hit the buildings as if it were a gag reel. I had enough. Over the years I kept up on the latest news by surfing the web. What I found is that American news were blips of static. Just enough noise to make you look, but nothing of substance. The stories were biased, the information was misleading and the news was missing many stories we needed to see. Fox news spoon fed the nation propaganda and lies, while the rest stood there silently.
Seven years of learning about the truth from the outside also made me feel like an outsider. Television shows that people raved about I could only look up on the internet. Jake resorted to renting series and I lived for the snippits from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. After some deep thought I decided that it was time to bring the television back into play. A lot has changed since the days of the OJ trial and 9/11. Fox News was laughed at. The Daily Show opened peoples eyes to the irony and misinformation that was abound. More importantly I was curious. I wanted to step back into the televised discussion. I had decided that it was okay to watch the news as long as you know there are other options. I'm not expecting everything to be different. It will be more of the same on many stations. It will just be nice to see it in it's entirety instead of searching for parts 1, 2 and 3 online. Come tomorrow evening I'll be hooked back in to the televised world and see what it can offer. Go me!