Normal Business

There's a flickering light in the hallway next to my apartment. It just refuses to die out. So whenever I enter or exit it's like being next to a disco strobe light.

The reason I bring up the light that refuses to die, is because I'm truly puzzled by the media. During the bombing "incident" today in London, we were presented with nonstop coverage all over the major networks. I muted most of it, but I read the captions. It seemed to me that we were getting 50% speculation, 40% repetition, and 10% information.

The repetition is necessary, because you never know when people are turning in. Likewise, the information is critical; however the speculation is unnecessary in my view. What purpose does it serve to say that this might happen? Sometimes, it seems like the goal of network news is not so much to inform, but rather to render paranoid.

The irony in all of this, is that after every major disaster involving terrorism, the authorities hold a press conference in which they exhort the people to "go about their normal business." I'm beginning to think that is easier said than done. We are expected to live our lives (while also maintaining vilgilence) while surrounded by news reports that scream "Could it happen here?" Now, while on one hand, it's good to know that there are attempts to assure our security as we "go about our normal business," the tone of these reports seem more to make us worried rather than relieved.

I don't want to come across as extremely jaded or cynical, but my suspicion is that the paranoid tone is mostly due to ratings. Ratings = money. Perhaps we'll all get so scared that we will have no choice but to stay at home and watch television all day.

Personally, I'd like to think that a lot of the news directors are just getting caught up in the story and are desperately afraid of turning away from it lest a major development occurs. Yet, I believe that the zeal with which they follow a story is partly ego-driven. Indeed, the public has a right to know, but doesn't the public have a right to sit back and process what did occur without being bombarded by "what if" scenarios?

I'm far from neurologically savvy, but I think the human brain can only take so much information in before overload, and I wonder if we're reaching that point.