All the News All the Time

There was a time in America when "The News" was a ritual that we shared as a culture. As television took over American living rooms and become the electronic hearth that has reshaped our culture, the news has also morphed into something completely different than those early television news broadcasts.

In the early 60's our farming family's television was not turned on until the evening news. It was an exciting event each day that my brother and I looked forward to. I spent those years in a foster home where work was the prime ingredient of my day and a chance to sit and stare and watch those flickering black, white and gray images on that small 18 inch screen was amazing. Perhaps it was then that my fascination with the daily news began.

My foster parents were Huntley and Brinkley fans; and like many Americans, Good night David and Good night Chet, was a phrase we echoed each night bidding the news of the world good night with them. David Brinkley and Chet Huntley were the first of a new breed of television newscasters. They were the first true anchors and the famous duo made the ABC evening news something that Americans watched avidly.

It's amazing to think that their first newscasts in 1956 were only 15 minutes long. Chet Huntley was located in New York and he brought us the news of the world; while David Brinkley kept us up to date with the news of Washington, all of it in 15 minutes! Those 15 minutes expanded to 30 minutes in 1963, in part to the growing interest in more news, the Kennedy assassinations, and the space program. Little did we know that over fifty years later, our world would be dominated by the news.

It's everywhere, ubiquitous in its presence. We are bombarded from every medium with the news of the day, the news of the hour, and minute to minute updates! Are we better informed? More importantly, is our culture better off for all the news that comes our ways and what is news now?

Are all the competing talking heads at CNN, MSNBC and FOX providing us with factual news or just blathering partisan opinion? Can we still trust the leading networks anchors to provide us with solid reliable information, and even if they do, is anyone really watching them anymore? What is considered news? Is the comedy humor news of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart with The Daily Show real news? American college students think so, as polls routinely list them as the news show of choice for many students.

As we turn on our computers each day, the latest "news" headlines and tickers scroll across our screens, keeping us up to date! This morning, September 29, it tells me that Lucy Vodden died yesterday of Lupus at age 49. Who is she? Why do I need to know that at 5:00 am in the morning as I drink my first cup of coffee?

Oh, a little click on the icon and I discover that she was the inspiration for the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Apparently she was a school mate of Julian Lennon at age 4 and he brought home a drawing from school of her. When asked about the drawing, Julian told his father, John Lennon, that is was Lucy with diamonds. And thus, musical history was made. I feel so informed.

As I sit writing this article, I reach over and flip on my radio to listen to NPR, my news source of choice. It plays all day on my office desk, as I write, work, move around in the house doing chores and bringing order to my world. NPR is supposedly one of those liberal media outlets, although I can't see that. Probably due to my own prejudices, I find it to be quite accurate and the only news choice I trust to even attempt to present the news without its own bias.

It is perhaps those biases that might be destroying our shared American culture. If we have to blame someone for that, can we just put the blame where it belongs? On the news. On all the varied, partisan, screaming, crazy, bitter, stupid, and loud voices of what passes for news for many Americans, right or left. It's a long way from Huntley and Brinkley to Olbermann and Limbaugh dueling it out, or Bill O Reilly, the used car salesman of the news shows. I wouldn't trust any of them to sell me anything, let alone their opinion of the news in our world.

Oh, how I long for Huntley and Brinkley in a world gone mad with news and more news, an endless stream of babble that is undermining our country with its vitriolic parody of what used to be The News. Has the world become so complicated that we must be hooked up to an intravenous news feed that connects us from computer to cellphone to radio to TV, beamed down from the heavenly satellites in the sky.

Somewhere in the mass of communication is a glimmer of truth. Hunting it out should probably be something we all strive to do, but it may be close to impossible to discover. Somewhere in the constant chatter is the truth buried by babble. Is our addiction to the news interfering with our lives? Would we be better off if we unplugged from all the news surrounding us and went back to the business of just living our lives?

But wait, what's this I'm hearing on my NPR morning show? It's Madeline Albright, the former Secretary of State for Bill Clinton, and she's being interviewed on the jewelry pins she has collected and worn in her years as an international diplomat. Now that has to be important. I need to know that, right? And what's this on my computer? Starbucks is selling an instant coffee. Wow!

Have a good news day and remember, it's just someone's opinion. It's not really the one and only news. Someone else has the same event, different spin, different twist and it's made into different news depending on who is doing the news that moment. I'll take Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds any day over Glenn Beck in the air with FOX News. But that's just my personal partisan beliefs shaped by my years of addiction to liberal twisted, slanted and spun news sources. At least that's what my news says is the problem.