By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

In this bloated, exaggerated, hyperbolic world of “The News,” can we really discern significance anymore? News programs found on Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS have crossed the formerly broad line separating information from exhilaration. Need I say more than, “JFK plane crash”?

Sensationalism rules. Spewing forth melodramatic stories at a ballistic pace, news programs have made capitalism the issue above such antiquated concepts as journalism, idealism, heroism or even realism.

Whose fault is it? Obviously, competitiveness has merged the major news programs into one large monster of morbidity. They would like to blame it on us. After all, we eat it up like a goldfish engorged on flakes. With sound bites containing words like hurricane, rape or anything Clinton, our nightly news programs suck in viewers like moths to a porch light. As an audience, our integrity and sensitivity have suffered dearly.

Basic, raw facts are not the issue. Entertainment is the issue. With pressure to generate higher ratings, thus higher revenues, news producers everywhere encounter the age-old dilemma of how to get people to watch. Disguised as hard news, stories of death, deceit and destruction are there to simply stimulate our already overstuffed minds.

Modesty misses the boat on this trip, however. The age-old philosophical ideals are surely corrupted. “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” has now been replaced with, “Which came first, sensational news or the desire to see sensational news?” “If Dan Rather fell in the woods and no one was there to hear it, would he make a sound?” “Can God make a scandal so big, Peter Jennings couldn't carry it?”

Scandal and tabloid TV are our God-given right. I am OK with that. And even though some people think that television was invented for PBS, The Discovery Channel and C-Span, I personally feel that this electronic quadrate never does reach its full potential as when it blares Judge Judy, Pro Wrestling or a be-leathered Xena, the Warrior Princess. Yet, no matter what your personal tastes, at the least, those forms of entertainment are honest.

The news programs are fallacious. The networks should either advertise their diatribes as what they are, or change their names: “Eyewitness Exploitation,” “11 Alive...or is He Dead?” “Channel 5...We Got More Blood than the Red Cross.” By any means, I am not into censorship, regulation, or even boycotting product sponsors (except maybe, dogs that wear hats). I say, if you don't like it, don't watch it.

Still, there has to be a revolution or at least an evolution concerning what the “news” is. Report information that we need. We don't need, “Woman Trapped in Crushed Car by 18-Wheeler.” We don't need any stories about people burned, tortured, gouged or fleeced. We shouldn't have to watch a single news show and hear words such as drive-by, nude dancing, firebomb, 9-millimeter, or anything beginning with “psycho.” Helicopters should be for reporting on traffic and weddings of rock stars, otherwise they should be grounded in favor of words and restraint.

The truth is, news programs present sensational events as a microcosm of mainstream life. The truth is, they aren't. We should be informed. We should be told. We should know... When television reporting programs recapture these values above all others, well, that will be news.

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