(These are Mark's views, not WAMU's views, AU's views, or any other U's views)
They used to be known in the trade as "pseudo-events" - happenings portrayed as news stories which really didn't change anything. In the western media's failure to register any real news this week, there have been several "pseudo events" to consume our valuable time.
First off, NPR's Morning Edition led off Monday with the headline "The security services promise to track all significant terror leads in future." Real news might have been a story which read "security services refuse to try to find terrorists."
Here in Washington, DC, we had the story "Property tycoon says he will not run against Major Adrian Fenty".
You know that property tycoon you've never heard of? Well he's not running for Mayor. That one will go down well in the bar.
As my old boss in Liverpool said when he heard the line 'they were taken to hospital by ambulance':
"It would've been bloody news if they'd gone to hospital in a horse and cart."
Yes, folks, the media doesn't want to invest in finding new things to tell us when old stories go bad.
They'd rather keep recycling them.
But as usual its much worse in dear old Mother England. There, the resignation of a foul-mouthed BBC talk-show host, a living monument to the corporation's dumbed-down state at the turn of the noughties, sparked the most dramatic TV moment of January, when he emerged from his London mansion to offer tea to the press pack.
Scroll to the video and listen to the panic in their insistent demands for answers to their trivia.
Terrorism? Unemployment? Global Warming? Give me a break.....
As one of my favorite eighties UK bands sang, "Its sheep we're up against, sheep we're up against".
