I know, it’s Tuesday. Feel free to initiate litigation.
Here’s the hate for today: the news. I hate the news. This is painful to write, since I am something of a newsaholic. However, the news has become more and more about partisan analysis and opinion and less and less about the news itself. Let’s take a teaspoon of known fact and mix it in with five gallons of airtime. Result: endless speculation, analysis and debate, which often devolves into arguments where two or three people are talking (if not yelling) at the same time. When I see, not just a split screen, but six talking heads in little boxed segments of the screen, I can only think of one thing: Hollywood Squares. It is getting more and more difficult to get just the news. That’s not really the focus of even Headline News (HLN) anymore. Pretty much the sole source of “Just the facts, ma’am” is the nightly 6:30 pm network news. Thank goodness there’s still one place left for the major stories of the day in condensed form. Even so, know what I hate about that?
Watch the nightly network news (ABC,NBC,CBS) and you’ll see something rather sad. They’re all sponsored by drug companies. All the commercials are for medicines to treat hypertension, erectile dysfunction, high cholesterol, atherosclerosis, etc. You won’t see those commercials on MTV. They’re on the news because old people – or at least older people – are the majority of the audience. The kids, meanwhile, are no doubt blissfully ignorant. Unless they’re getting their news from Inside Edition, that is.
Speaking of the news, here’s a really interesting timeline of the entire Boston Marathon saga from bombing to apprehension. This case marks an unprecedented response to crime. Never before has a major city been shut completely down to apprehend a criminal (or two). Imagine that strategy meeting: let’s shut down everything; stores, schools, trains, buses…everything. That was bold. Here’s what it looked like as it happened:
Boston Marathon Timeline from Emily Tolan on Vimeo.