Cable Killed "Breaking News"

By Eric Ivanov on 06/17/2009

BREAKING NEWS: CABLE NEWS NETWORKS ARE BEING TAKEN TO COURT FOR THE MURDER OF "THE BREAKING NEWS STORY."

It used to be that "Breaking News" actually meant something many of us. Now it seems to be a mere warning so we can change the channel because it is something the networks have already been talking about for days. Our grandparents probably remember when Breaking News meant "Listen up. You should know this, it's new!" That day is sadly gone. If you don't believe it, turn on CNN, MSNBC, or FOX and watch it for half an hour, Breaking News will flash on the screen for things about Tom Cruise's latest breakdown or what "experts" speculate about why something happened.
Breaking News only worked well with the nightly news format. It allowed people to watch their regular programming, and then if something extraordinary happened, it would be interrupted for breaking news. The lack of availability of news created breaking news. Now with the rise of the 24-hour news networks, stories are broadcasted over and over with little to no changes in them. People can get their news anytime, any day, and almost anywhere. With the slow news days, which seem to be almost every day, the networks are left with what they have, and feel they need to make it seem as important as possible to attract viewers. Their answer? Make it breaking news, and put a person who really doesn't have a clue, on camera, to talk about the effects of the story. CNN's "The Situation Room" is notorious for doing this. They have done it on stories from the plane landing in the Hudson River, to the latest shooting at the Holocaust Museum. Those are stories that are deserving of the title "Breaking News," but after 15 hours it has certainly lost its novelty. But that's not how the networks see it. Speculation will go on for days about what happened, how, why, and what would have happened. So called "experts" are brought in, graphics are used, and people are forced to watch something that they have already heard about days before.
Is it a fight for ratings? Or is it just yet another way to fill a slow news day? Can any good come from this format? Apart from the over reporting on a single subject, there is a glimmer of hope in the distance. First off with the 24-hour news coverage, if something happens then the public is bound to hear and see seventy different angles of it. The stories can be better understood, and be examined in a ways that traditional nightly news would not do. However in the end, television has been so over saturated with news stories, that it becomes old news quite fast, because everyone has already heard about it from the first update or the Internet. If breaking news if to be taken seriously again the networks have to show restraint in using it to describe only the most important need-to-know issues.

Additional Photos: ["cartoon," buttersafe.com]