The Sad State of News - Part 2

This growing trend of exhaustive coverage and, more specifically analysis for everything, at times becomes absurd.  It appears that much more time is spent analyzing problems, situations and who said what along with how they said it, and the humidity while they were talking, than doing something to address them, assuming doing something to address them would be appropriate (Granted, I am doing the same thing here but this is for the sole purpose of purging frustration; please bear with me).  Immediately after a press conference, speech, debate, etc., there is more analysis of what was said than actual things said.  What is worse still is when there is typically zero effort to put things into context or to add meaning.  People throw out useless platitudes, refrains and empty rhetoric by the boatload.  In some cases there are conspicuous efforts to rehash things that were just said.  I remember years ago following a notable speech or announcement, I was introduced to perhaps the lamest attempt at introducing discussion I had heard up to that point in my life.  Unfortunately, it has been repeated many times after that.  Immediately after the announcement was finished, a news anchor called upon some expert or analyst to comment on the announcement.  All the anchor could muster was, “John, the president of company ABC just finished his press conference.  What did you hear?”  ‘What did you hear?’  I, at least at that time, had never been so taken aback by the lack of effort of someone on television.  I understand that the question was not necessarily to be taken literally, but we all just heard the same thing.  Please don’t rehash the exact same information, now just being stated in someone else’s voice while possibly getting some use out of a newly purchased thesaurus. 

One of my favorite incidents of much coverage about nothing was after the “earthquake” in New York City in 2011.  Thankfully, there was no real damage and no one was injured.  That in no way, however, precluded hours of news coverage to report that no damage occurred and no one was injured.  News folks were grabbing people on the street and asking them the well-thought-out question, “What did you feel?”  The ground moved; what do you think they felt?  What really disturbed me about this particular incident was that Judge Judy was interrupted for continuing news coverage about nothing.  I would have learned more from the honorable Judge Judith Sheindlin than random people on the street stating that the ground shook during an earthquake.

The Sad State of News - Part 1

I will not be the first to complain about news, news coverage or journalism (likely to be referred to as NEWS going forward).  I have heard those that are more qualified and conversant in these areas air their grievances, so I realize it is recognized as a problem.  Thankfully, though, there are still those that hone their craft and are really good at reporting, breaking stories and bringing attention to matters that are important, albeit not necessarily appealing to the masses.  But trying to find truly worthwhile news covered in a manner that is at least an attempt at being unbiased, sans hysteria, has become increasingly difficult.  There is not much I can do about it, so I will complain about it below and in entries to come.

1.  One of the issues with NEWS is that there is too much of it.  Without getting bogged down with semantics, my point is that there are multiple 24-hour news networks that, based on their designation, have to air something for 24 hours.  Other networks air several hours of news programming on any given day.  That being the case, a lot of worthless stuff makes it to the airwaves and also onto the internet.  Since there is typically not enough substance, or at least no one willing to produce any, things that are not really newsworthy, in my opinion, (Brad Pitt buys new dog) receive more attention than they are worth.  What has also become popular is having panels of people to discuss and analyze every minutiae of an occurrence or situation.  Similar to the issue noted above, having several people under contract to sit and talk about stuff means that they are going to sit around and talk about stuff even when there is nothing worthwhile to sit around and talk about.  Thus we are inundated with news with much of it being repetitive and a large chunk of it being worthless.