The Death Of The Media
Walter Brasch is a retired print media professional who posts a weekly column over at Pacific Views. This week he posted a The No-News No-Column Column.
The media is like the youngest kids who play “organized” football [OK, soccer]. They all cluster around the ball, rather than spreading out and playing their positions. If the ball escapes the cluster it will probably go out of bounds, because there is no one outside the clump to stop it.
The period Mr. Brasch discusses had only two “news” items, a vehicle accident involving a golfer, and a couple crashing a party. There were hundreds of reporters, hundreds of inches of print, and hundreds of minutes of time expended on two events that deserved an inch or so of copy in a weekly.
The protests in Iran are continuing. People are being blown up in large numbers in Pakistan and Iraq. A swath of the US is being buried in snow. Wildfires are burning in Australia. A cure for sickle cell may have been found. The US is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. None of that can trump a guy having an accident in his driveway, and a couple attending a party they weren’t invited to.
2 comments
If we were focused on more than the sensationalist aspects of the Tiger Woods case, and transforming the argument into that of fame, racial identity, and the ephemeral nature of popularity, then this degree of media saturation would be nearly justified.
But that’s not how it’s being reported.
.-= last blog ..Saturday Video =-.
It would be nice if there were some actual reporting, and less speculation, but there really isn’t anything to report.
The Florida Highway Patrol was handed the accident by locals, because no one wanted to deal with it. They issued a careless driving ticket, because there was pressure for them to do something, and hitting a tree and fire hydrant is proof of careless driving. If the fire hydrant hadn’t been hit, they really wouldn’t have done anything. This took place in a driveway, not a highway, so the whole thing was pretty iffy, from a legal standpoint.
I probably wouldn’t have issued a report if it had been in my jurisdiction, because that would have made collecting from insurance company hell on earth. I doubt an insurance claim will actually be filed, as the guy can pay cash for another car, so why go through the aggravation?
There were a lot of things going on in the world that I care a lot more about than the domestic problems of people who play games for a living.