Being "objective" has been an unrealistic ethic that defines the news media. Fallows agues that journalism and the news has provided largely "entertainment fluff" and has virtually selected unthinking news communicated to the American people; and Paenti agrees and states that the Media is big business and therefore is not independent, objective, neutral, informative, balanced, and truthful. Their ideas may seem outlandish and farfetched, but it is the fact of life for the media today. The news media struggles to please every component of the business, from the advertisers to the owners. In turn, every word that is typed or spoken has one side of the story.The news shows that air on television today is nothing. but superficial programming to appease the public. Flip through the channels on a given day and a person will be bombarded with repetitive news "specials" or useless information. One has to ask oneself if there is not anything that is more worthy of this airtime. Parenti states that, "By focusing on "human-interest" trivia, on contest rather than content, the press makes it difficult for the public to give intelligent expression to the political life and to mobilize around issues (Parenti 17)". The news media would rather spend their time and money on issues that do not attack what the public really needs or wants to know. An example of how the media does not report on what the public wants to hear that Fallows brings to the surface is in the 1992 presidential campaign. The president took questions from teenagers that were mostly concerned with the relationship of the government and schools or community projects. The questions raised, ranged from laws that might be proposed for punishing people that sold guns to our youths to the portrayal of young people in our society and even as simple as what is Oxford like. None of those questions were ever answered. Fallows notes that, "There was no overlap whatsoever between ...
