Still Cranky

I know I've been picking on "Dr. Nancy" a lot lately. When it comes to providing blog material, this show is the gift that keeps on giving.  Although the syndrome that I'm about to describe is hardly unique to "Dr. Nancy" and MSNBC; it's a familiar ailment, common to almost every cable news show.

The other morning, I was watching as Dr. Nancy presided over a very interesting and important debate about whether illegal immigrants would be covered under the proposed health reform plan.  The debate – between two credible experts – was just getting going and I was glued to every word.  We were finally getting some intelligent answers about this controversial subject!  I was about to give
"Dr. Nancy" high marks for tackling this thorny subject and trying to clarify the matter once and for all.

Uh, not so fast.

Suddenly, Dr. Nancy broke in.  "Sorry," she said, "I really hate to do this, but we have to interrupt for some very important breaking news."

I prepared myself for the worst.  Had a new terrorist plot been uncovered?  Did a hurricane wipe out the Eastern coast of Florida?  Perhaps there'd been a sudden upswing in Swine Flu cases?

Not exactly.

At that moment, the cameras cut away to a live picture of several limousines, far off in the distance, pulling up to an unidentified building.  The cameras were so far away, one could only make out a few small, blurry figures slowly getting out of the vehicles.  No one was even remotely recognizable.

The "very important breaking news"?  Apparently, members of the Kennedy family had begun arriving at the service for Eunice Shriver. 

That's all…they were arriving.  That was it.

The cameras lingered awkwardly for several minutes.  They were trained on the scene, but there wasn't anything to see.  

There really wasn't anything to say, either.  The commentator struggled to fill in a few details about what we were observing.  "This is a big family…and they're very close.  I, um, don't think Ted Kennedy will be attending today's service…but I'm not really sure about that…"

It was bad enough that we were intruding on a private, family moment.  But it wasn't even a moment.  It was just a bunch of parked cars that were mostly – and perhaps intentionally – obscured by dense foliage.  Yet this disconcertingly nebulous, non-event was somehow deemed important enough to break away from a legitimate, lively debate about health care.  Did they figure it was worth cutting away on the chance that we might catch a glimpse of Maria and Arnold emerging from one of the limos?  Or maybe we'd see one of the Kennedy clan?  Was that the gamble?

Sorry, but that's not news.  It's voyeurism.  And in this case, it wasn't even effective voyeurism or good tv; it was just an awkward moment in search of a story.  If I want to see somber members of the Kennedy family arriving for the Shriver memorial, I can just open up this week's issue of People magazine.  I'm sure they're already planning a big photo spread…immediately following a story about how the Olsen Twins have triumphed over anorexia.

Who makes these decisions?  I certainly don't blame Dr. Nancy.  Her producers decide when to break away for important, breaking news.  The trouble is that lately, just about everything rates as "breaking news" ("We interrupt our regular scheduled program to bring you this important news story:  the sun came up this morning!").

In the Media's never-ending quest to fill every second with something that will titillate, boost ratings and feed our insatiable appetite for the sensational, they've lost the ability to distinguish between real news and everything else.  Just because they super "Breaking News" in huge, italicized, capital
letters across the bottom third of the screen and add some dramatic, whoosh-y
sound effects, doesn't mean it's news.  And like that boy who cried wolf one too many times, if they keep whipping us into a frenzy, only to announce nothing, pretty soon we're going to stop paying any attention at all. 

Which brings me to this very important alert for all you cable news producers:
it's time for a lot less hyperbole and a lot more selectivity.  

If you're going to call it "breaking news", it had better be newsworthy.