There might be days when there’s big news. But, even when there isn’t you get “breaking news” with urgency on cable TV, talk radio and the net. Plus, you get commentary.
News seems designed to entertain. And some of its associated commentary sneaks opinion into the story, a journalistic no-no that’s become accepted the way we accept exaggeration in ads.
You’re musing about this because fellow patrons in a North Shore coffee hangout have turned their corner of the room into a raucous debate society, arguing not from first-hand knowledge, but second-hand references to charismatic commentators.
In the last century a comic-philosopher named Will Rogers said “All I know is what I read in the papers.” That’s more than a self-effacing quip. It’s a statement about our limitations to know what’s really going on beyond the breakfast table. What he was saying is: “All we CAN know is what we read in the papers.”
This honest insight applies now more than ever as we go beyond papers to include broadcasting, bombshell cable personalities, even blogs. (Blogs: after years of usage, the word still sounds like a description of sci-fi monsters from a swamp planet. The attack of the blogs…)
Modern news is all-too-often presented with an eye toward controversy, ratings and the boosting of one political slant or another. This can make reasonable people unreasonably dogmatic considering where they got their facts. When you hear them duking it out over morning coffee you gotta wonder: maybe the only person who’s right is not even there–Will Rogers.