Breaking News
Enoch Peter Gamoian

 

A huge, important-looking animated graphic flashes across the screen. Cut to the cable news anchor, harried, breathless, self-control hanging by a thread. “We have breaking news!”

Partial flooding in a White House parking lot? Breaking news. 

Congress forms a carnival midway oversight committee? Breaking news.

Jimmy Hoffa found hiding in Carrot Top’s hair?  Breaking news, and Carrot Top's lifetime achievements are the lead.

A more appropriate graphic would be a cartoon of a guy with a stick,  beating a dead horse. 

I worked in television for five years. When someone yells, “Breaking news!” in a TV station newsroom, orchestrated bedlam ensues. Information is gathered and reported as events unfold, often before all facts are fully verified,  and all at fighter jet speed. 

My first breaking news event was Columbine: April 20, 1999.

The second was 9/11. 

Outraged, devastated, and exhausted, we worked non-stop  for days.  Working that hard, that fast, and in that environment,  endorphins kick in, and exhilaration gets tossed into the emotion soup.  It’s detachment, and when you have to get important information out to viewers as quickly, clearly, and concisely as possible, you better have some of it.

There are plenty of genuinely profound reasons to detest cable news. One of them is personal. At any random moment, an anchor, with great authority, utters that beloved cable news cliché.  I freeze, prepared for the worst. 

Oprah Winfrey just told Ellen DeGeneres to shove it at the Daytime Emmy Awards.