Could CNN be Presenting Real News So That Even "Tabloid" Americans Will Watch?

CNN's broadcast this morning outraged me and not because I was unhappy with CNN, quite the contrary, I was outraged at the way our government is blatantly robbing from the poor to give to the rich, as CNN so vividly portrayed in the twenty minutes I tuned into this morning. CNN brilliantly made evident how our tax dollars are going to the people who need it least and ripped away from the people who need it most, in such a way that it could possibly capture America's attention away from Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and tabloid news that so many news stations have resorted to reporting in order to keep their ratings high. CNN, this morning, illustrated how to make real news interesting and at the same time educational. I believe the order the news stories are brought before the public in addition to the way the material is presented has much to do with America comprehending what our government is getting away with.

I tuned into the story about the crime that took place in Dunbar Village — a West Palm Beach housing project on the poor, black, north side of this city -- who one local prosecutor called “the worst crime I’ve seen in 37 years in the business." The New York Times described the crime as follows:

"After dark on June 18, the police say, as many as 10 armed assailants repeatedly raped a Haitian immigrant in her apartment at Dunbar Village and then went further, forcing her to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son. They took cellphone pictures of their acts. They burned the woman’s skin and the boy’s eyes with cleaning fluid, forced them to lie naked together in the bathtub, hit them with a broom and a gun and threatened to set them on fire."

CNN reports on how public funds, the primary source to run federally subsidized public housing, have gone down and millions of dollars that were earmarked for drugs and crime in housing projects have now been eliminated.

Citoya Greenwood, a very courageous single mother of a four-year old girl, is one of the only ones willing to speak out about the horror of living in Dunbar Village, whereas most are silenced by a very real fear for their lives.

The mayor of West Palm Beach went to the government looking for funds to rebuild Dunbar Village, built back in the 1940s and very badly run down to put it mildly, and received no help at all. She said the residents here are literally left to fend for themselves in a place that could very easily be called hell.

CNN followed this story with a compelling report on U.S. farm subsidies or "corporate welfare", showing where our tax dollars go instead...federal farm subsidy programs who pay out to wealthy rice and cotton farmers, dead people, and rich people like David Letterman, Scottie Pippin, Paul Allen etc. who need our tax dollars as much as Mick Jagger needs lip augmentation.

I realize that it's very possible that the twenty minutes I happened to watch was a fluke and that I'm giving CNN too much credit but I hope not. Even if this was incidental, it proved to me that the news media can educate and report the news so that it will capture America's attention.