Congratulations to Judy Hauser (column, 11/2) for her column on the balloon boy providing a needed distraction for she and her mother in dealing with the problems of aging.
She found what I thought no one ever could – something positive from our “news” organizations’ downward spiral into degenerate sensationalism. It is sad what it says about our citizenry that “news” organizations bump up their ratings with this type of hype, that people are taking advantage by engineering sensational events to get attention and the two are feeding off of each other.
What we need are more serious journalists like Walter Cronkite and fewer talking – no, shrieking – heads trying to create outrageous hype as their daily fare. Every act of senseless violence, tragedy or, in this case, staged theatrics comes to us as if from a bull-horn on nearly every channel. It is almost as if the crazies are tuned in and trying to outdo each other to get the attention they crave from the media. Where they fail, the shrieking heads are creating uproar out of every significant and even insignificant political event. It’s nearly enough to make what seems like a minority of reasonable people in our population equally crazy.
In the meantime, I’m happy it provides a bit of diversion from more personal, really difficult problems for anyone.
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