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    Saturday, March 24, 2007

    Silly News Network: I took my son to the ophthalmologist last week for his last check-up before surgery. The office must have a deal with CNN. They have television sets hanging from the ceiling with constant CNN. I stopped watching television news in the 1980's when the people who made it became more interested in sensationalism than reporting news. I remember the moment I made that decision perfectly. It was one of the major network evening news programs I was watching, and the report was about a woman who had travelled to Central America to adopt a baby. She was beaten mercilessly by some angry villagers, and someone had managed to videotape the beating. The last shot of the report was of the woman lying on the ground, her skirt hiked up above her hips, twitching uncontrollably. Who deserves to have such an image of themselves as that transported to millions of people? I turned it off and never turned on another news program. Except when I can't help it, as in the ophthalmologist's waiting room. Looks like nothing has improved.

    In the thirty minutes I spent in the waiting room I must have heard the story of the lost boy scout three times. I learned that "authorities were confident in his survival skills" but there were "concerns that he was without his medication." The Boy Scouts are good at teaching basic survival skills, but can anyone say with a straight face that they trust a 12-year-old who walks away from his troop to use those skills wisely? And that medication that it was dangerous for him to go without? Ritalin.
    Television news - hype remains their specialty.
     

    posted by Sydney on 3/24/2007 12:37:00 PM 2 comments

    2 Comments:

    Given the number of doctors available to us, I'm on the verge of making it a policy that I will stop patronizing the offices of those doctors who insist on blasting us non-stop with the inanities of CNN or any of its equally obnoxious rivals in the waiting room

    By Blogger No Acute Distress, at 9:54 PM  

    "television news"?

    The definition of oxymoron

    Stella Baskomb

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:55 AM  

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