News, news, news.

It's touchy stuff. Like land mine touchy. And I certainly don't want to say anything that is insensitive to the 8 people who were killed and the 11 people who were injured in New York City yesterday. But I am really sick of the news agencies exploiting people's misery. And some of them are actually using this tragedy to further their political aims. It's fucking disgusting.

This morning when I ran through the channels to do my news check, this is what I found:

At of course that's understandable to some extent. But I cycled through several times, and all of those channels were still on that story.

I don't think it was because they had new information.
I don't think it was because they cared so deeply.
I don't think it was because there was no other news to report.

I think it was because they knew that they could get people to watch. 

Remember when MH370 went down in the Pacific and those same channels showed us hour after hour of footage of an empty ocean? That's just SOP these days.

And it bothers me for a lot of reasons, the primary one of which is that I think it's really disrespectful to the victims of the tragedy being "reported." They should not be used as bait for ratings. If you have new information, report it. If you have new insights, relay them. But to keep repeating the same things . . . or, even worse, to engage in round after round of speculation . . . is just disrespectful. And repetition definitely deadens a viewer's response to a tragedy. So what these news agencies are doing goes beyond exploitation, it actually makes people care less about the tragedy. 

And that is unacceptable.

I did find one slice of hope in my quest for news this morning, though. 

I've joked on One America News in the past, but when I checked in on them, here's the story that was running:

And as I continued to cycle around the same stations, it became apparent that while the other channels were staying on the same story, OAN was not. Nor were they ignoring the story of what happened in New York City, I hasten to add. But it wasn't their only story.

So I think I'll be leaning on OAN a bit more in the future.