sensational!

What a tumultuous week in global affairs.

In the past few days, we have seen:
-A spoiled terrorist attack that would have been deadlier than 9/11 and directly affected two Western Democracies;
-A harsh armed conflict in the middle east that pitted the region's only Democracy against an Iranian/Syrian funded terrorist organization;
-The intense diplomatic negotiations to bring a cessation of violence in the middle east;
-The ousting of a respected three term Senate incumbent in a primary;
-The activist judicial ruling against the domestic surveillance program;
-AND-
-The outrageously anti-Semitic behavior of soon-to-be-former congressthing Cynthia McKinney.

We now face:
-A long, heated campaign season that will ultimately decide the fate of American invovlement in the middle east;
-A controversial national debate on the limits of the government in prosecuting the War on Terror;
-An extremely volatile situation in southern Lebanon spurred by delays and unwillingness to deploy a U.N. peace-keeping force - which could lead to more hostility in the very near future;
-AND-
-A tough diplomatic battle in regards to dealing with Iran and Syria's support and funding of Hezbollah, Russia's $1 billion weapon sale to Iran, and the UN resolution to scold the Iranians in regards to the upcoming nuclear crisis. In more general terms, the mad dictator, Ahmadinejad, who is convinced that the end of the world is at hand and that he is the one who is to bring it about in the next week.

BUT

All that I have seen on the news for the past day and a half is a 5 year old girl who was killed ten years ago and the pathological pedophile who claims to be responsible.

This is an awful situation for the family, but the media has nothing on which to base its reports and this is very, very old news with a very, very limited scope. Over 2,000 children were killed in 1996 when this case originally came to the public's attention. This one just happened to be the most photogenic.

The real death that should be a top story is that of quality journalism - which unfortunately died out some time in the mid '90s as a result of the growth of the 24 hour news market and America's relentless craze for sensationalism.

Cable news should be called "cable speculation". They report what they hear and deal with the consequences later. Consider the Sago mining tragedy. The media reported that all but one of the miners were alive and the families were overcome with joy. They showed footage of them hugging, crying tears of joy and singing. An hour later, the talking heads confessed that they had gotten the story wrong. All but one of the miners was killed.

Just yesterday, a 60 year old woman had a claustrophobic fit on an airplane and the captain decided to ground the flight to take care of the situation. Two major networks reported that a woman with a screwdriver, vaseline, matches (all of which are banned on commercial flights), and a note with a reference to al-Qaeda was raising hell. When the truth was revealed, their defense was, "well that's what we heard!" It has since been reported that she might have had two of the items with her on the plane, but this still represents shaky journalism.

The blame cannot be placed squarely on the shoulders of the anchors, producers, and network executives. It should be placed on the American public. After all, the networks are just runnning what the market demands.

Start demanding quality - at least in the area of news.