May 17, 2013

Like many folks, I have a couple of “breaking news” apps installed on my iPhone. I like to know what’s going on in the world. I feel it is my duty as a responsible citizen to be aware of urgent information as it becomes available. It’s one of the reasons we enjoy this technology thing, right?

The trouble with all this is that there are 24-hour news agencies that are in the biz for ratings and with good ratings, profit. These folks tend to abuse the whole “breaking news” concept. For example, as I was sitting here, wondering what I was going to write about in this blog entry, a notification popped up on my iPad. The notification was from CNN.

It was not a notification regarding the exploding volcano in Alaska.

It was not a notification regarding the minor earthquake that was relatively nearby.

It was not a notification warning me of governmental responsibility, the coming together of the political process or anything remotely “breaking”.

The notification was to alert me that the Powerball jackpot for this weekend is the second largest in history. So, not only is the Powerball jackpot not the largest jackpot in history at this moment, it’s only the second largest, CNN is at the point of scraping the bottom of the barrel for something, anything, and reports on a lottery jackpot that isn’t even record breaking.

It’s kind of like naming windstorms or having Wolf Blitzer talk to a hologram. It’s idiotic.

I can see where conspiracy theorists can come up with their theories about the US news agencies simply existing to distract the American people from the real issues that are plaguing the world today. When 24 hour news channels deem any- and everything as breaking “news”, people come desensitized to the world.

There’s only one thing to do.

I just deleted the CNN app.