I listen regularly to WNYC, the local NPR station. But when we’re in the car, Eileene often listens to WCBS (AM 880), first for the traffic reports and then because she just wants noise on the radio.
And noise it is: newsoid bits delivered in fifteen- or thirty-second headlines. What really bothers me about the station is not the sound bites posing as news, however; it’s the commercials posing as news. Many ads are delivered in the same bland newscaster voice with little or no warning that the nominal news has given way to sales. I don’t consider “We’ll have the traffic for you right after this,” sufficient. Quickly telling the difference between the two can be very difficult, unless you recognize the announcers by voice, and by the time you’ve separated potentially useful information from blather, you’ve already been distracted from traffic.
This morning, however, I worked out a quick way to distinguish newsoid from commercial: bad news is news; good news is advertising. Earthquake? News. Murder? News. Live healthier? Diet pill ad. First lady insulted? News. First lady gardens? Nursery ad. Riots in Italy? News. Festival in Italy? Tourism ad.
The technique isn’t perfect. The stock market was down this morning, but presumably it’s still news when it’s up. And medical news is tricky; a report on a promising but experimental approach to curing some disease you’ve never heard of sounds almost exactly like a pharmaceutical product placement. But it’s pretty reliable. I’d be willing to bet you could keep up with 90% of the newsoids while ignoring 90% of the commercials once you learned to tune in only when someone speaks with a frowny voice.
Of course, that would only reinforce the sense that all news is bad news, and the world is going to hell starting this Tuesday, but really: how is that so different from the news as it is already?
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