Those of you who visit my site frequently will notice a few changes. I like to call it version 1.3 of jimporett dot com. Mainly just a cleaner look and better readability. You may see more subtle revisions in the coming days.

For the most part, I have no interest in former CNN anchor Aaron Brown’s opinions on the news business. He’s just as biased as anyone else in that business (on either side of the political landscape).

An event that sticks out where I did respect his work was coverage of 9/11. I remember watching him and others report from New York and Washington D.C. as the events were happening that morning on a big screen TV in my office cafeteria. He covered it about as well as anyone could and I appreciated how clearly he communicated new information as it was coming, with that surreal, horrible scene just behind him.
In a recent speech he spoke about the news business today. Highlights were reported in a Palm Beach newspaper online about this speech. Many topics he discussed I could debate and others I could care less about. However there were two statements I thought were important to note:

“‘Truth no longer matters in the context of politics and, sadly, in the context of cable news,’ said Aaron Brown”

“Many Americans on the left and the right aren’t interested in the truth, but simply want news that confirms their viewpoints,” he said.

I read those sentences a few times. Whichever side of the political spectrum we fall on, we do prefer to hear news that confirms our worldview. However, I think many Americans are interested in the truth, whether it agrees with our position or not and if we want to admit it or not. I can absolutely see why he would question that with the culture we live in today. But I see his point in the sense that the truth is not always what we prefer to hear if it doesn’t confirm of our opinions. I think the statement cuts much deeper than cable news channel choices.
Do we want the news to report the unbiased truth? I think we all do, but to his point, many also want it reported to support our personal opinions. But the truth and our personal opinions do not always match up.

Here in Chicagoland the football season has sadly come to an end.

Da Bearsssss lost daaaaa NFC divisional playoff game my friend. Pass da haaat dawgssss, braaaatsssss and saaasage. (Think in a Chicago accent… It’ll make more sense. If you don’t know what that is, come to Chicago and you’ll hear it) If we only had a team of all Ditka’s.

For some reason I wasn’t very surprised the Bears lost to the Carolina Panthers last Sunday. They did a little too much trash talking leading up to the game and were rusty in the 1st half, since they sat out the starters for the last regular season game. In the end, it was a flawed defensive scheme that was their downfall. A surprise considering their performance throughout the season. It was a fun season to watch nonetheless. Now the sports doldrums take over here for the next 2 months until the Cubs spring training.

I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw this picture on another blog. Click on the picture to see a larger version of it.

Proof that there is a sign for everything these days. A sign which has a sole purpose to warn people that they could hit their head on it. It has been called a “self referential” sign. If the sign didn’t exist, there would be no need for it in the first place.

In a way it reminds me of the old Batman TV show where everything was labeled with a lame sign as if you didn’t know what they were.

Sorry for the lack of posts in the past month. I didn’t realize the archive of the posts for December/Jan was inadvertently moved to another folder on my website host during some routine maintenance I was performing.

I didn’t notice anything was wrong until a friend stopped by the site today. When they emailed me to say hi, I thought I’d check out how things were looking here and to my surprise nothing from December or January… D’oh!

I’ll spare you the rest of the details. It’s all up and running now and I have reposted those that were missing.

I should be back to more frequently posting now.

Picture credit: Fox

Note: This is another re-post from the posts that disappeared.

Happy 2006!

The past few days I have seen a couple of “2005: Year In Review” TV shows recounting the news, sports and technology stories of 2005. These shows are a staple of this time of year and I always find it amazing to watch these shows from the perspective of thinking back to January of that year. Thinking back to when no one but God knew what the 2005: year-in-review would document.

Each year so many things occur that we never expect. Exhilarating stories, sad stories, shocking stories, funny stories extending over a gamut of emotions and senses. I find that incredible! As 2006 begins, I again have that sense of wonder. What will this year bring? What stories will the Year In Review of 2006 tell? The Lord only knows.