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After Years Of Breaking News, Now It's Broken

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By STEVE OTTO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 28, 2008

It's hard to remember which came first, breaking news or cable TV news.

It used to be that "breaking news" was the sort of thing that caught your attention. You might be sitting there watching some game show and suddenly there would be a burst of dramatic music and you would be staring at a TV anchor looking somber. He would tell you about the breaking news, which was usually either an assassination or some terrible disaster. Then the network would send you back to the show, promising more news at 11.

With the advent of cable and 24-hour news stations, all that changed. Pretty soon everything was "breaking news."
Weather reports and campaign speeches became "breaking news," as the continuous flow of news had to be filled with material that at least seemed important.

We've adapted down here at the Type and Gripe Factory. We even have an entire staff we call "continuous news" that is constantly putting up stories on TBO .com, our Internet platform.

Changing Times

People are now able to get news everywhere they go. You can be driving down Interstate 75 and punch up the latest world news on your Blackberry while driving at 80 mph, which I think a lot of people must be doing.

The media - and for our purposes today I'm going to throw in everyone from The Wall Street Journal to Bill O'Reilly to the radio talk shows to La Gaceta to our place on the Hillsborough River that my colleague Phil Morgan calls "The Ministry of Truth" - have fallen on difficult times.

How and when readers and viewers get the news changes as dramatically as technology allows it to change. What readers and viewers want to know is a little less clear, but it does appear we are becoming more interested in quick bits of information.

Radio and television, with air time to fill, have opted more to partisan talking heads, speaking to millions on platforms that have little substance or fact to hold up under scrutiny.

All in all, if you are someone who has been in the business for any length of time and believes in credible sources and real content, it is a bleak picture.

A Flight Of Fancy

On the other hand, last week we were treated to Xinhua, the official news agency of China. On Thursday, the Chinese launched, or at least I think they launched, their most ambitious space mission. It was to include their first spacewalk.

Several hours before the rocket left the ground, the agency's Web site posted an article that not only described in vivid detail the takeoff and flight, it included dialogue between the Chinese astronauts and ground control.

Among the quotes online were: "Ten minutes later, the ship disappears below the horizon; Warm clapping and excited cheering breaks the night sky, echoing across the silent Pacific Ocean."

According to The Associated Press, the Chinese news agency would only say they had made a "technical error."

It was a great error. It served as a reminder that for all our flaws and warts and for the almost circus atmosphere that permeates our media, describing a space flight and quoting astronauts before they fly is not the way we do business.

Perfect we are not, but it is still a free press.

Keyword: Otto Graphs,

to read and comment on Steve Otto's blog.

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