I know, you’re sick of the constant whining. But I gotta say this, I really do. 680 News sucks. Big time. The only thing that sucks more than 680 News is talk radio. Which, as you might imagine, leaves this void on my radio, where most of the AM band is garbage.

Let me explain why. Today, 680 ran a story about Arnold, governor of California, arriving in Toronto. One of the things they keep saying is that “no one knows much about his politics, but tonnes about his movies.” I get that. We’re in Canada, we don’t care so much about Californian politics. But he’s here on a trade deal, so maybe we should, eh? Yet instead of informing the general public of what the Governator thinks and does, 680 sends out a reporter to ask Torontonians what their favourite Arnold film is. Yeah, thanks for raising the level of debate there, guys.

-10 score for pointless, information-light, bush-league, tabloid journalism. You basically found a way to turn a story that could have been about the debate over stem cell journalism, or Republican politics, or the cult of personality, into a crap non-story about a bunch of substandard films.

Then, there’s a story right afterwards about A-Rod (a baseball player or something), being seen with a woman, not his wife, after partying it up at a strip-joint. I don’t even need to comment, but really? A story about a baseball player? In Canada? And not even a Canadian player? Or a player for a Canadian team?

-20 for ridiculous, sensationalistic, paparazzi-style celebrity-magazine so-called-journalism. Another in a long line of things that just don’t matter and no one in their right might gives a crap about.

To top it off, as the coup de grâce, a story about gun crime. Okay, a topic I care about, marginally. Reported on as if it were an epidemic, as if guns are falling from the sky into the hands of our precious children. You know how many gun crimes there are per person in Canada as per the UN? 0.00502972 per 1,000 people, that’s how many. Compare that with 0.0279271 per 1,000 people in the United States. Yes, that would 550% more. And of course no one mentions that though crime may be up slightly, it’s up from historic lows. Yes, that’s right, violent crime in Toronto is down, not up, at least from historic levels. Yet the frenzied calls for a ban on hand guns (a ban, co-incidentally, that no one has taken the time to explain how it will work), the frantic cries of “gun crime epidemic!!!!”, and the shrill sky-is-falling think-of-the-children rhetoric of those out to push an agenda take forefront over a rational approach to what is, yes, a problem. Who is at the forefront of this fear-mongering, you might ask? 680 News. If I hear them use the words “epidemic” and “sweeping gun violence” one more time, I’m going to… well there’s nothing I can do.

-50 score for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. A big thumbs up to 680 News for their quality reports, standards of journalism, excellent grasp of facts and issues, sterling choice of stories, and sense of fair and balanced reporting!!! Way to go, only -80 points from me today!

Tags: rants