News Anchors Suck

Posted at 4:24 PM Nov 05, 2008

By G. Martin

Is there anything more obsolete than the modern-day news anchor? After closely watching the election-night shenanigans, it's apparent now more than ever that the current of model of broadcasting is about as useful as an appendix for your pinkie.

Getting your news the traditional way, with some talking head “presenting” it to you like a waiter reading items off a menu, might be nice, but reading it yourself on the Web is faster, cheaper and a lot more efficient.

Names like Walter Cronkite, Ted Koppel and even Peter Jennings used to command respect and provided an air of authority and expertise that people came to expect, bringing to the national table a level of intellectualism that most could not necessarily find on their own.

Nowadays? We’re left with the likes of Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson, names that elicit about the same amount of awe as a local affiliate team out of Omaha.

One of the main reasons we, the people of the 21st century, get our current events from the Internet is because we don’t want to tolerate these bloviating blowhards and teleprompter twits with their overdone bouffants and prefab “banter.” Are the graphics-happy conversations/reactions of Couric and Shepard Smith and their requisite 18-person analyst panels relevant when all you want are the results that apply to you and yours before you pass out?

Sure, the argument has been made that the Internet can be isolating and dehumanizing, locking individuals into virtual, anti-social prisons of their own design. But in this day and age, when the average overworked citizen barely has time to microwave dinner or get more than four hours of sleep, cutting through all the manufactured flotsam and getting your info from Google instead of Gibson is the only way to go. When time is of the essence, being a “fast food nation” isn’t such a bad thing.