News Diet

I am going to attempt to 'unplug' for the week...so, no blogging related to the news. Maybe I'll discover some other fun things to blog about!

Vick and diapers

Okay, I know it's a Friday, at the end of summer, but does this stuff really constitute as news (and Breaking News, no less)??

- Someone named Michael Vick who gets paid a lot of money to play a sport is pleading guilty to something having to do with being a bad person.

- The sad female astronaut - who we all remember (because it was "reported" incessantly) wore diapers to drive cross country to attack another woman who was also dating her cheating boyfriend - was in court asking to have her ankle tracker removed.

- And more old news about a child molester who has already been convicted of horrible crimes gets sentenced in Florida.

- Then, there are those pictures and video of that poor little 5-year-old Iraqi boy who was set on fire. Very sad, compelling even, but does CNN need to air it every 5 minutes?!

Ahhhh! Does this remind anyone else of the summer of sharks immediately preceding 9/11? Maybe it's just me...

A shared pet peeve

Caught this in The Washington Post this morning...

How Fresh Is Your Cable News? Check the Label

This just in! There's no more news on TV, at least not on the cable news networks. Plain old news apparently just isn't good enough anymore, so TV news stories have been getting new and improved names.

President Bush's latest news conference? CNN labels it a "Developing Story." A car bombing in Baghdad? The banner on MSNBC reads, "Breaking News." A blown transformer in New York City? Fox News Channel is on it, with a graphic that announces, "Very Latest."

Perhaps the biggest question is why the news needs such quickened-breath labels at all. Isn't all news just, you know, new information? Jeremy Gaines, a spokesman for MSNBC, replies that the labels "telegraph the story in a visual way" for channel-surfing viewers.

Ah. Kind of makes sense. With all the talk shows and shouting heads on TV, with all the opinion-mongering and vicious partisanship, a banner on the screen reading "News Alert" reminds viewers that the news channels still sometimes get around to . . . covering the news.

And then there was "news" about Anna Nicole Smith's baby's daddy (see image). Was that really Breaking News?