It's been my observation, that the "news" isn't news anymore.
In a conversation yesterday, someone observed to me that the BBC has an actual news program. Europe, or at least England, actually have news programs.
In this country, whether in print or on the Internet or on the airwaves, news has degenerated into a continual rehashing of the latest scandal ad infinitum until you're heartily sick of hearing about it.
I don't need to know anything more about poor Paul McCartney and his ex and their multi million dollar settlement.
How many times do they think we need to be told that Obama speaks with a forked tongue? Enough already. Any person of even moderate intelligence gets it. Well, ok maybe that needs to be addressed a few more times. It does seem really, really, really, far fetched that he could attend a church for 20 years and not know what the pastor is preaching all that time. It begs a question of Obama's attention span.
I did notice that there were a number of individuals who insist that the vicious comments made by Obama's pastor were "taken out of context". Minds capable of distorting the truth to that extent should frighten us. Minds like that should scare us to death.
I DON'T and I repeat DO NOT need every dirty detail about the governor of New York's indiscretion. I particularly don't need ANY detail at all about the other party of the indiscretion. I have no use for this information. As far as I know there's not going to be an exam with questions about this man and his fall from grace or others connected with this scandal.
You can almost see a group of children squatting around something dead on the ground and squealing eewww gross when the news media presents to us 60 different ways and 210 times in the same day for a running total of 3727 times in the same week the latest "on dit". Aren't these people supposed to have some sort of edumacation on what constitutes news? (I just made up those figures by the way)
Do these people not know that immorality hasn't been news since the Garden of Eden? I'm beginning to develop an aversion to the news in any form simply because they repeat themselves so many times. It's annoying. Is that their point? Do they want intelligent (well ok, relatively intelligent) people to lose interest in the news and stop keeping up? Maybe that is the point.
If that's not the case, maybe there should be a whole semester in Journalism 101 on the difference between news and gossip. Perhaps they just don't teach that anymore.
All of that being said, I am grateful that situations like the legal system in Massachusetts refusal to pass Jessica's Law and the judges there setting dangerous criminals free on a nearly daily basis, are kept in the forefront of the public arena.
Still, I do wish they'd learn the difference between what's truly news worthy and what's enough when you mention it once.
1 comment:
I'm afraid that the media presents the "news" you complain about over and over for one reason: people have a ghoulish and perverse affection for the dirty details of life. If such "journalism" did not sell, it would not be printed. The problem is two-fold: yes, it is debased journalism; but the fact it sells speaks volumes about the degeneracy of society. People have become so mindless that real news or thought-provoking journalism has no appeal. The same is true in the world of literature. Our libraries are being purged of classics to make room for chick-lit frothy love stories. Is the librarian at fault? Yes, but the buck does not stop there! Our mindless society demands books that tickle its ignorant and sensual appetite. Literature that requires (and provokes) thought is no longer demanded in a world that has thrown aside logic for feelings. It is sad and very frightening - mankind operating by its sin-wounded feelings is thundering like a herd of lemmings toward the abyss!
Patti Petersen
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