Think About It. Breaking News. It was my understanding that news by definition was information not before known about a current event. Some will remember the street news hawkers’ “ Extra! Extra! Read all about it.” Major newspapers actually published a special edition when an important new event occurred. Nothing got broken in the process. In the modern TV age the current events stations all “break“ the news, sometimes for days at a time. While offering a live feed of a Senate hearing this morning, the most viewed cable network simply stated Fox News Alert, so I decided to watch. This afternoon, while their peerless pundits were pondering the earlier event, the headline said Happening Now. Since that was clearly not the case (unless talking heads can be classified as Happening), I decided not to watch. Who knows if they are really “fair and balanced”; but at least they hadn’t broken anything excepting my faith.
Who started this frenzied feeding of the beast, an expression used long before the popular youtube program? Blame Ted Turner who gambled a fortune launching the first 24-hour cable news channel at 5:00 p.m. on June first 1980. What followed was an occasional event that increased public desire for current information about present events. 1986 brought the Challenger Disaster when we lost seven crew members of the Space Shuttle Challenger. In 1987 18-month old Jessica Simpson fell down a well in Midland, Texas with CNN ‘s captivating coverage of the rescue. But it was the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 where CNN was the only news outlet with the ability to communicate from inside Iraq during the initial hours of this historical event. It catapulted past the Big Three American Networks for the first time in history and created a voracious appetite for all the news all the time.
Stop the presses. Breaking News. Ted is no longer a Millionaire. No he’s not broke. He is a Billionaire.
Now, with dozens of world-wide sources for information emanating from seemingly everywhere in the world (universe?), the competition apparently prompts the sources to attempt to break the information before the others. In the olden days of only print, reporters hurried to “scoop” their peers. Now we seem to get nothing but broken news, and I’m shattered by the thought. However, you must excuse me. It’s 6 o’clock when every night at this time it’s here. And I wouldn’t want to miss the Breaking News. Think About It.
As usual, thanks to Wikipedia for keeping the faith in providing facts and figures.