York, the Movie

Previously blogged in York, now you can vicariously live the experience of York, the movie, without having to read text -- except for the occasional title.

Life is good. So is York.

Why Is News Irritating?

I'm not sure which came first, advertising or the news, but in our modern times, I know advertising comes first way too often. News is a tease to get you reading or watching long enough to suffer the advertisements. The different varieties of news, including investigative reporting, magazine articles, TV documentaries, and weather forecasts, all indulge in exaggeration and hide-the-ball for the purpose of advertising.

It starts with the headline. Often it's a question. A question as a headline? "Nixon, Clinton, Trump, Why Is Impeachment More Common?" (USA Today, 12/7/19). "Does the world need any more large zoos?" (BBC News 12/6/19) Questions are safe. A statement might take a position that might dissuade someone from following the trail of ads.

Then there are the headlines that cater to the publication's reader base. My favorite culprit is Huffpost where partisan hyperbole is the business model. "Maddow Nails Hypocrisy of GOP." "Ex-Ethics Chief Roasts Trump-Defending Republicans With A List Of Future Quotes [sic]." Like, whatever Maddow or an Ex-Ethics Chief says will "nail" or "roast" anything for the GOP leadership?

I could quote and endless number of hyperbolic headlines from Fox Noise, but I cannot stomach that nonsense long enough to even skim its headlines. Tabloid Fox Noise, by far and away, is the most financially successful exploiter of any news base. It thrives on ignorance.

The effect of exaggeration is to mislead. News should not mislead.

Then there is the all too familiar clickbait. I first encountered the term only recently; maybe a couple of years ago. Clickbait is all over Facebook and, if you read news online, there are "sponsored" links all over the pages. If one clicks on the link, one enters the rabbit hole of hide the ball, if I may mix two metaphors. The clickbait headline is a tease that leads a person through an existential journey through a maze of endless advertisements to read another tease and search for the link to the next page where another tease is embedded in another maze of advertisements — often ads for other clickbait sites. If there is a point to a clickbait article, assuming you have the fortitude to find it, I can assure you it is a huge letdown. Exaggeration.

Granted, clickbait sites are not traditional news sites. But they operate similarly all too much: suck in the readers long enough to blast them with advertisements.

Which leads me to my major frustration: well written and substantive articles on interesting subjects where I have to find the ball.

I often wish I had taken a journalism class at (Theodore) Roosevelt High School (and drama, but that's another post). So I am no expert on how good investigative news articles should be written. But I know how I like to read any information: tell me what you are going to tell me; tell me; then tell me what you told me. The writer should be knowledgeable enough to summarize.

Ah, but to summarize is to make a statement that might dissuade someone from wandering through a forest of anecdotes followed by a trail of no doubt relevant details before getting to the point. I hate articles that begin with a touchy-feely anecdote, or any other anecdote for that matter. Start with the point and let me decide whether I want more information. Oh, but then I won't get to see the advertisements.

Now it is quite possible that there are people out there who enjoy reading investigative reporting, or eagerly suffer through Big Pharma advertisements to get to the weather forecast for the following day. They work like novels. The opening is a tease in the form of an anecdote, then curiosity and patience lead the reader to savor the verbal trail of carefully assembled information to, hopefully, a satisfying climax. Ah, minutes later the reader is educated and can conclude that fifty years ago Big Oil had its own scientific evidence that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, which evidence they promptly buried. Or, in the world of History Channel documentaries and their ilk, why  dinosaurs went extinct, or Atlantis sunk, or what was discovered in Caribbean waters. Or the chance of rain tomorrow.

I don't have the patience for exaggeration or hide the ball.