NOT THAT YOU ASKED
Since this is the Christmas issue, I don't want to use this space to be negative. That means no rants against conservatives, Republicans, the Tea Party, politicians in general or religious extremists. Instead I want to thank all of you who support this newspaper either by advertising in it, subscribing to it, or buying a copy each week. Without you, we wouldn't be able to do what we do.
Newspapers are a dying breed, and that's not only a sad thing, but a dangerous one. First of all, newspapers are still the best way to get the news. They cover stories in more detail that television can and they try harder than any other media to do it without bias.
Second, when people rely mainly on TV or the internet for news they tend to look for sources that don't tell them what they need to hear, but what they want to hear. All you need for proof of that is to look at the ratings for FOX News against CNN. FOX regularly beats CNN in the ratings, not because they cover the news better, but because they tell people what they want to hear.
There are plenty of newspapers that lean either to the left or right, but the good ones try to keep their opinions confined to the editorial page. The Democrat-Gazette is a conservative paper that has written scores of editorials against the Affordable Care Act, but it has also printed plenty of news stories on its front page that tell how the Arkansas private option is working very well.
The internet is probably the worst place to get your news. For one, you don't always know the source of a report unless you look for it, and frankly, most of us are too lazy to do that. For another, just like with TV conservatives are going to look for right wing websites, and liberals are going to look for left leaning ones.
The danger I wrote about above is that as more and more people get their news from biased sources, they are getting less news and more opinion. Again, they are hearing what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. That means that when it comes time to decide who to vote for, they aren't informed enough to make the best decision.
I have one final argument in support of newspapers, and it's a good one. During the last election I got all of my news from The Sun, The Democrat-Gazette, Time magazine, and CNN. I only rarely watched KAIT. As a result, I avoided being bombarded by all of those political ads that ran nearly non-stop. And, let's face it, by Election Day all of the people who had seen them were sick of them. It got to the point that some people didn't even care who would win, they just wanted the ads to stop.
If you were one of those people prepare now for 2016. Subscribe to some good newspapers (Including this one), and keep your TV on the cable channels only. It's the only way to survive an election with your sanity.
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