BREAKING NEWS! BREAKING NEWS ! BREAKING NEWS!

NOTHING HAPPENED - AND WE WANT YOU TO HEAR ALL ABOUT IT, ALL DAY LONG, EVERY HOUR, ON THE HOUR!


Sky News just went from useless (unless you're a Madeleine McCann fanatic) to... well, uselesser. (Or use-less, as far as this spectator goes. Gotta love them words... :))

There was an »incident« at Heathrow airport earlier today. Much, MUCH earlier today... An emergency landing, to be precise. It was not »terror-related«, there were no victims (or even seriously injured passengers), not even a »spectacular« blaze. In short: nothing happened. It could have, but it didn't. (Thank God.)

Why, then, we have to listen about it ALL DAY LONG – and still labeled BREAKING NEWS?

(Which, by the way, is a newly introduced "improvement" on the part of Sky: they don't have »news on the hour, every hour«, not anymore - now they have »BREAKING news on the hour, every hour".
How is that possible, you ask?
Well, you take any piece of new information - what was once, not so long ago, called simply news – and you label it BREAKING NEWS... and then keep running it all day long.
If the screen is too cramped, simply remove »excess« information, like the hour... Because everyone knows at all times what the hour is, up to the minute, of course; on the other hand, you may not know that a piece of news is »breaking« unless they tell you so; also, you might forget what their email address is unless they constantly remind you of it. With such an exciting schedule, who needs to see the actual hour of the day?
Oh, and don't forget to pad the long minutes between the end of each »on the hour, every hour breaking news« and the beginning of the next round of the same with dramatically repetitive drumming and fanfare...
Apparently, the SKY masterminds never read the fable about the boy who cried wolf... In fact, I doubt very much that they read much of anything, especially not spectators' comments.)

But it's not just SKY anymore; even BBC, usually focused on anything except life in Europe, kept recycling the news about the airport non-event with astounding persistence.

As for CNN... Gimme a break. ;)
Who watches CNN anymore?
(Well, except for the occasional Anderson Cooper 360 – he's alright – and the occasional Larry King Live, which, interestingly, works much better in transcripts than »live« (except when he is hosting some of his more flamboyant guests, like Sylvia Browne – that's actually worth seeing.).

Why am I ranting about this?

Because I have a special interest in the media and/or any other instruments of mass manipulation (I do not mean this in a necessarily ominous way; I am just deeply interested in the human psyche.)

And because interesting things seem to be happening »out there«. In Texas, to be precise, where apparently a »mile-long« unknown flying object was spotted hovering over a town, with scores of witnesses, including a pilot and a law enforcement officer; and at the Arecibo observatory, where a »mysterious signal« from the outer space was picked yesterday.

Regardless of what they are, at least they are legitimate stories.

Why, then, we have to watch and listen to reports about a literal non-event at London airport? (By the way, I am pretty sure there were other accidents, including fatal ones, somewhere in the world... just not in the »first« world.)

No, really: I am asking you.