I’m not au fait with the latest trends, or too many French phrases, come to that, but I’ve noticed in the last few years, something very annoying has happened to TV rolling news channels.
And I don’t just mean there’s far too many of them.
Add newspapers like this esteemed publication; online news; and hourly news bulletins on every radio station and we’ve never been so well informed.
I have a dim memory that when I was a lad, the news at six or 10 pm might, on very rare occasions, be interrupted by a ‘News Flash’ containing something really important.
But rolling news channels are so obsessed with ‘Breaking News’ they break it over our heads far too often.
Presenters could be in the middle of an in-depth, interesting interview with a celebrity or chatting to a politician and a person of dubious character (you’ll have to make up your own jokes in regard to that last sentence, otherwise I could be censured by sensitive Senedd censors*), then, suddenly, one of the presenters will say, “I’ll have to stop you there, because we have some breaking news!”
Forgive me for pointing out something I may have pointed out in one of the hundreds of articles I’ve written over the last decade, but I reckon seven out of 10 ‘Breaking News’ stories are not so urgent they couldn’t wait a couple of minutes until the current interview or news story has been wound up.
It can only be a matter of time until a Breaking News story is interrupted by more “Breaking News”.
* I completely understand why some of our 96 (at the last count) Welsh Senedd Members could be so sensitive to scrutiny and, assuming they’re able to understand it . . . satirical humour.
Being a MS. can be a perilous occupation. You are constantly in the public eye and if you’re foolish enough to put a foot wrong, career-wise it could be “Goodnight Vienna!”
In other words, one day you could be in the Senedd debating ‘Big Issues’ and the next day you could be on the street selling them.