REFLECTIONS

    I reply to THPrincess as a post instead of a comment attach to her own recent post because of its importance. With the rise of the twenty-four news cycle, the news-readers of the cable- and non cable-news programs must fill time. ‘Leave no dead air’ is a lesson beginning dee-jays learn in radio early. It has been made worse with the tee-jays who need to fill-up its broadcasts with videos. Is the equivalent of the radio adage: ‘leave no dead vision?’ The result is mindless talk that disintegrates into expressions of shared feelings from watching shared videos. Shepard Smith of Foxnews comes to mind when his ‘live coverage’ went Oprahized by his crying for the flooded New Orleanites while he wondered, “where are the feds.” (Have you noticed the use of old, dated videos with ‘breaking news’ reports when there are no available new videos yet?)

    There are days called ‘no news days.’ During those days we find innocuous and repugnant reports to the point of ad nauseam. The Dog-days of news. Should there be another rule governing how these time wasters get their fifteen minutes of frame? Time wasters whose peccadilloes help the news-jays fill-up the air and vision. Would the first amendment actually need to be changed or can we rely on the Supreme Court to incorporate the 14^th Amendment again? ‘A News-Watcher Bill of Rights?’ It isn’t as easy as saying, “turn off the t-v.” We can’t rely on the Internet for news any longer; the news companies are turning their websites into mini-television receivers. The print-media rely on television; the Internet has gone multi-media instead of text. The news-readers, tee-jays, dee-jays, who nots need to learn what I decided as a freshman in college when I was cub-reporter briefly on the Lakeland Mirror. I was assigned to report on the election of the officers of young Republican club on campus. The elected chairman and vice-chairman were rumored to have been caught perversely together the previous school year (it was verified indirectly by the chairman in my interview with him.) I knew the public had a ‘right’ to know, but did they really want to know? I didn’t even want to know. I killed the sensational facts. Others must learn to do the same today.

Clarification

I wish to mention that when I wrote, “There are days called ‘no news days,’” I didn’t want it to be understood to exclude the news-jays who refuse to report on good news of our Iraqi successes. My apologies for any misunderstandings.
Hat-tip to THPrincess for pointing this out to me.