To fill that yawning chasm of 86,400 seconds takes some doing. Even if adverts are taken into account it still is one hell of a void to fill every single day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week ,365 days a years with the odd reprieve of a leap [year or second].
To even begin to hold our rapidly dwindling attention spans the news has morphed into opinion and to actually try an keep us awake so that one of the advertisers can even hope to get its message across; it has to be intense.
Take the recent fake video entitled "Syrian Hero Boy" that many news agencies passed around made by Norwegian filmmakers in Malta. After which you begin to wonder what "news" is actually real or not. What is propaganda what is reporting?
Fox News amongst others has adopted the strategy of hyperbole, fear and loathing and just plain downright lying. No sonorous tones there, just ramped up vile rhetoric apparently not as easily seen through as one would like to believe.
Other networks have hired those that shout and drench the camera with spittle in their desperate attempt to keep us focused at least until the adverts have aired. Every story must be spun to extract the maximum out of it even if it means playing with the truth. No matte what the data says, no matter the reality every story must have at least two sides. hence air time is often given to the terminally cretinous.
Once you have muddied the waters up enough any piece of unrehearsed garbage can be sold with the full weight and authority of the network. There are some seriously crazy people given enormous opportunities to flog any conspiracy theory that takes their fancy. The abilities to misdirect and lie are all but endless. Orwell pictured a single propaganda outlet, I don't think he ever imagined the wall of noise we have now.
Some lazy, worthless and corrupt "journalists" and I use the word loosely here have done serious damage from such things as
1] Tearing apart ACORN with lies.
2] Lying us into war by passing off government lies as truth
3] Driven science into a two sided belief structure with potentially catastrophic results all in the name of sucking up air time.
4] News sources tend to be pooled and passed around without even the bare minimum of fact checking. Apologies for factual inaccuracies and quite frankly piss poor "journalism" are all but hidden from view.
5] Do we really need to be terrorized by every event around the world do we need potential results amplified beyond all reason? Ebola was a recent example, Yet we can safely ignore slow long term problems until the make the news, then turn the facts upside down in a news flash. Snow is global cooling!
But, but we live in a connected world, however it often seems like the mindless outrages get more attention than the serious and hard to grasp ones. I fall for it as well sometimes finding myself repeating what has been screamed at me as I pass through the digital world. Damn if only I had stopped to think for five minutes.
That is why we really on journalists to get to the bottom of a story, that is why it is worrying as even when the reporting seems to be global the actual sources of news tend to be quite limited. It's gone viral, lets show it, oh dear it was a fake, quick move on.
I am glad there are reporters out there that give a damn, that will review information and cross reference it with other sources. This takes time and the resources, sadly this doesn't keep the beast fed with the latest outrage, terror, catastrophe either real or imagined.
Notice how quickly the Ebola scare became .....meh?
There are plenty of major stories out there that require in depth and painstaking work, but these often have fewer resources than pulling up the latest AP, Reuters or viral video presentation.
If you want to get to the bottom of any issue it still takes enormous time and effort for any reader. Do we have the time to sift through it all, dammit I don't, I just hope someone else does and that they honest when they do so, even if they get it wrong honesty goes a long way.
Just a thought.
I am still working on my diary The Amazighs btw, hopefully I'll have enough information to write in a couple of weeks.