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.