Is it too much to ask, for quality news?

I have a deep and hankering revulsion for CNN's Rick Sanchez, and although I hate for my blog to be a rancorous one, this time I geniunely feel compelled to spill the beans.

And if I were to put it into context, it's not really Rick that I hate. It's what he repesents. Everything about someone like him decries the downfall of true journalism: using twitter as a valid news source; the conversion of fact into melodrama; and most of all, the sheer recklessness of inaccurate information.

Delta and I watched him on live tv, pointing at the Galapagos Islands on a map and calling it Hawaii. A couple weeks later we watched him pull the dogtrick again, this time confusing Madagascar with the Maldives.

I find it absolutely dispiriting that someone like this, with no concept of geography, would be qualified to deliver the news. To have his own daily show on CNN!

I had almost recovered from these heartaches, and would have been happy to leave bygones as bygones, when he pulled another gaff yesterday by criticising the USCIS for something which turned out to be factually wrong. Again. And this irked me instantly - partly because he's just so frequently wrong, but also mostly because he criticised the USCIS. And you know how I hold them so dearly to my heart.

Maybe I'm just ticked off because every time he comes on, I'm compelled to change the channel (don't want his viewer ratings look any higher, even inadvertently). Which means I have to scrounge around for the remote every afternoon when he comes on, which is pain in its own right.

I regard with great sadness the decline of journalism as an industry. Of course there are still great journalists, driving the forefront of true, investigative reporting. But increasingly, the Amanpours of the world are fewer, and further between. But let's face it - more often than not, we're lumped with the Rick's of the media.

Although frankly, this isn't about Rick, as it is about us. What has our world come to, that we find it acceptable to receive news at such levels of incompetence? What does this say about ourselves? It hurts my head that we have resigned ourselves to this standard of ineptitude.