What Is News?

Aquarian Weekly 4/22/09 REALITY CHECK

WHAT IS NEWS?

Okay, this is rarely a subject I write about, but talk about incessantly with friends, colleagues and family: What is news? In other words, what should be something we know about nationally or as we used to say in bullpen sessions in bare-bones weeklies, what is newsworthy? Should there be a national litmus for defining news, as opposed to a random happening that might be interesting if examined ad nauseam. Local news is exempt from this discussion. It is always going to be loaded with stuff like brush fires and community drives, the odd burglary and the always-popular weather anomalies. Then there is the obligatory cute story about kittens or a guy breaking the state record for sitting in a tree. Because it’s extremely difficult to fill print and air space anywhere, especially in say Omaha, Nebraska, local news doesn’t count. Neither does morning television or radio count, which are both chockfull of banal absurdity. But national news needs to have some standards of coverage, which I argue it has abused beyond repair.

I was reminded of all this when a debate began over the coverage of the so-called TEA Party protests, which were dubious in their construct for several salient reasons, not the least of which was that tea was not literally involved and of course its falling short as an homage to the original Boston Tea Party since it was not over “taxation without representation” but just taxation. I get people don’t like taxes or the government to spend money, even if they ironically love entitlements, a large military, infrastructure, air travel, and the entirety of the monetary system. But really, who is in favor of taxes? This is what I call a slam-dunk issue and thus no need for heralding the protest, like anti-war rallies. War is bad. We get it. Give me something I can work with like the fight against cat juggling or Mother’s Against Kicking Babies.

But nevertheless a protest is definitely news, even if it is cringingly promoted by a major news organization and as a result almost completely ignored by others. This usually reeks of a staged event, like something out of Citizen Kane, so then how much of it was an actual story as opposed to another in a random string of barely interesting human endeavors kick-starting another news cycle?

News Cycle, which means a 24-72 hour period when one story becomes the most important thing in the civilized universe and then disappears completely, is also a major culprit for jamming odd events or arbitrary tragedies into a form of celebratory voyeurism. There are too many of these babies to recount, but you know what I mean. One is going on right now. Pay attention to see if it lasts the week. I doubt it.

To put to bed current events and get to the universal argument of what is news and what isn’t, we go to the Pirate/U.S. Navy story, which absolutely is news. In fact, it is big time news. When an impoverished nation bores outlaws of the high seas and holds up the greatest navy in the history of human kind, it is a cranking story. It has international intrigue, national security interests, life and death outcomes, and may ultimately affect the nation’s health and well being. This compared to say a kidnapping of a ten year-old in Bucks County, Pennsylvania is not newsworthy outside of Bucks County. Maybe if the kid was the offspring of an inaugural transcontinental flight pilot or perhaps if the ten-year old were the kidnapper, then we’d have something, otherwise, if Mr. And Mrs. Smith loses their kid to a crazed neighbor for a few weeks, I don’t need to know about it.

We are the world’s drug; the true opiate of the masses. We’re the dangerously mercurial lover that is untrustworthy and vindictive, but so goddamned fun.

This kind of thing has been a problem since the 1980s in broadcast/network news. It is a terrible epidemic of what I call the “Kid Down The Well Syndrome” – my own spiteful homage to the Depression Era penchant for struggling radio news outlets to bring the drama of small town fire departments’ attempted rescue of stupid, unsupervised children after they were stuck somewhere.

Today the advent of 24-hour news has taken KDWS to another level of minutia. This does not include dime-a-dozen opinion scream-fests hosted by pasty middle-aged men in desperate need of blowjobs and access to history books, but does include marginal stories that have been dragged out for literally weeks. Good examples of this is the death of Princess Diana, which has since taken on this queer Elvis revisionist disease or the JFK Junior airplane crash, or even the demise of someone who was on a constant deathwatch like Ronald Reagan or Gerald Ford. The reason I forgive talk-hosts from this breakdown is that I believe it important that pre-teens learning civics to see that even grown men have a difficult time understanding the stark differences between socialism and fascism. I include the marking of dead major celebrities or political figures as marginal for it is not an on-going event. They are dead. Tell us, and move on.

Everyone knows it was the OJ. Trial that put cable networks on this course. The ratings were nuts, the national furor over the rainbow, and the opportunity for career-building and book deals too good to pass up. Shit, the only reason Greta Van Sustren could afford to reconstruct her face and muck up the airwaves with endless pabulum on desperate boyfriends who prostitute their missing sisters or deadbeat dads smuggling dope from Indonesia to sate a gambling jones or the latest KDWS was Orenthal James Simpson, another reason The Juice should get the juice.

All right, sorry about the bad pun, but this is a particularly galling subject, these missing kids in hotels and abused animal stories do not compare in the newsworthy department to a lunatic Asian guy in Binghamton shooting up the neighborhood because a black guy is president or something fairly wacky like that. That’s news, because lone gunman with a shoulder chip is America’s news bread-and-butter. It’s tradition, so it gets precedence.

I shan’t belabor the point another sentence, but to leave you with a short list of what is news and not news, so if you see it, you can quickly identify it and either be well-informed or turn the station/page. If you stay with the story, you’re going to have to admit that even though you do not buy the National Enquirer and do not consider yourself a nosey rubbernecker, you’re either completely bored with the concept of your own existence or simply too lazy to turn away from Headline News and the ear-piercing claptrap coming out of the angry woman with the retro haircut.

News/Not News Top Ten

1. The president’s choice of pet is not news. Dog rips out president’s jugular is news.

2. Anyone saying something really dumb like “Hitler was a fair diplomat” or “So-and-so likes to hump squirrels” is not news. Government either spying on its citizens or its officials voting on bills they have not read or understood is news.

3. Any law broken on a cell phone camera is not news. A law broken that costs you money like banks being run like casinos is news.

4. Internet scams on the elderly and kids are not news. Internet viruses that infiltrate our international spy network are news.

5. Any domestic squabble, violence or general bad behavior, unless it becomes serial and spreads throughout a fairly large region of the country is not news. Raul Castro poisoning his brother’s cigars is news.

6. Someone famous announcing any new revelations about their sexuality is not news. The homosexual community gaining their civil rights is news.

7. In fact, anything about someone famous, unless they are running for major office, saving the Third World (not talking about it, actually saving it) or firebombing a village – this includes sports celebrities, who are dumber than dirt and even less important, is not news. Fuck celebrities. This is never news.

8. Nothing a former civil servant has to say, especially those who will be dead much sooner than later and thus have no stake in the issues being decided is not news. An Al Gore vs. Dick Chaney pheasant shoot at the equator is news.

9. Dumb ass boyfriends of defeated candidates dumping their pregnant teenaged girlfriends are not news. If dumb boyfriend takes on almost future mother-in-law for Alaskan governor’s office, then it’s news.

10. Any jackass mauled by bears at the zoo is not news. Same bears being awarded custody to jackass’s children is news.

Reality Check | Pop Culture | Politics | Sports | Music