As someone who watches a lot of cable news, I absolutely despise the content. Whether it’s the fact that pundits and anchors are hopelessly out-of-touch with the real conversations held online — often on Reddit or 4chan — or its ideological tendencies toward extreme Trumpism or CNN-ism, cable news is still ingested by millions of Americans, many of whom are unaware of what their favorite news stations get wrong. Here are my three reasons CNN/Fox/whomever shouldn’t be watched by any serious, concerned citizen and the alternatives to the aforementioned.

1. They miss the real conversation

More times than not, I’m marveling at the conversations and trends happening online that are completely ignored by cable news. More and more people eschew party lines and favor their own niches, such as those in the Neo-Reaction/Alt-Right or the Marxists/An-Caps. These are the new trajectories for our political environment, especially as younger voters err toward strongmen ideologies with even stronger aesthetics. And what is cable news covering? A meaningless tweet or an insipid press conference. There’s a coming political revolution of new ideologies and new leaders, and yet it’s woefully under-covered by news outlets.

2. They are partisan mouthpieces

One doesn’t need to remember the glory days of Brokaw and Koppel to know that cable news is infinitely skewed one way or the other. Everybody knows it, and that’s why people choose the channels they do. We live in an increasingly tribalistic political environment, and people like to have their opinions reaffirmed. Networks know this, and they capitalize on it mercilessly. News is a commodity, and the bigger the outrage, the greater the views.

So, do I blame cable news channels for being partisan? No. To each their own charlatan. My qualm is that channels feel the need to be partisan. Fox News is a prime example. There wasn’t a time long ago when the channel wasn’t unabashedly in Trump’s back pocket, i.e. the Roger Ailes days. (For all the man’s faults, he was good at keeping opinions and news separate.) Now, the president’s hatchet men maintain the party borders on every show, touting the same old talking points and bemoaning “RINOs.”

CNN and MSNBC are similarly run by ideologues who see Russians in every shadow (at least overtly, as I doubt smart men believe half the nonsense that’s put on the teleprompter). Why do these networks feel the need to be firmly on one side of the aisle or the other? It’s because these networks are mandated to maintain the political divides. Outrage as a mechanism to increase viewership aside, these channels are now firmly run by the Trump-RNC-Fox and DNC-CNN pipelines. In short, cable news is disingenuous in its political views and their origins, and they are little better than party mouthpieces.

3. They’re obsolete

This can easily be another post of its own, but cable news viewership among younger voters is small enough to demonstrate that, until they wise up to #1, they won’t speak to the soon-to-be decision makers. The largest generation in American history has come of age, and they’ve found a country broken by their forebears and tarnished by its current leaders. (Factoid of the post: the median member of Congress is 59. Try dealing with student debt or tech giants de-platforming people when you can’t figure out your iPhone.)

Cable news has long been a mainstay of the political machine that has propped up the last four presidencies. As parties grow more radical, so will their network affiliates, and the vast majority of Americans will turn elsewhere for news and political affiliation, and that is the true story: what comes next.

Stay abreast of Reddit and Twitter. The two will balance the other out and present some idea of the real conversation and continuing trends over the next few election cycles. And, for the truly daring (myself excluded), there are other sites like 4chan where political conversations are unfiltered and genuine (if not to a fault). But, that’s a post for another time. Until then, take cable news with a grain of salt and cross-reference your news stories. Partisanship can be minimized by an informed populace. Until then.

-CAL