Months ago, I subscribed for the CNN “Breaking News” text alerts, because hey- I’m not always paying attention and shit happens in the world that I sometimes need to know about.
Apparently, CNN has a very liberal idea of what constitutes “Breaking News”. Now, to me, breaking news is stuff like: HEALTH CARE REFORM PASSED, PRESIDENT SHOT, RHODE ISLAND NUKED! You know, stuff that is either monumental for one reason or another (SCHOOLS DESEGREGATED! ABORTIONS FOR EVERYBODY! FRED PHELPS GETS GAY MARRIED TO LONG TIME LOVER!) or has a direct effect on life or safety of most Americans (terrorist attacks, health care for everybody, blah blah).
Breaking news is not any of the BS they text me about. Here, let me show you:
or
or
or
Oh, thank God you updated me that he’s resting comfortably!
Now, those all definitely fall under the absolutely ridiculous, not “breaking news” category in my book. There are other texts they send that while I believe do contain relevant information, aren’t really BREAKING NEWS!!! either. Examples:
or
Important and interesting, sure, but hardly urgent must pass along news.
Yes, I know I can unsubscribe or get my news another way. Doesn’t mean I can’t be annoyed with some of the stuff CNN pushes as BREAKING NEWS!!111!! to my phone. Bah. A pox upon them or something. I don’t know, this isn’t the Pit so I don’t have to get all threaty.
Sounds like you disagree more with the definition of “news” than anything else. In that sense, it’s an old argument, and one I’m afraid you’ll lose every time if you don’t already agree with the info CNN is getting on what their viewers want.
Our local news at 10 will often have a “breaking news” story that is pretty much an update of a story that was first reported on the 5 or 6 o’clock news. I’m not sure I would consider a story that was first reported four hours ago “breaking” news, but there ya go…
The Wasington Post has a service that’s maybe a bit better than that. OTOH, I got one from them today about Sarah Palin signing an appearance deal with Fox news.
Even when news is breaking, TV reports are pretty useless. Once the original story is reported, it’s all recap and fill without the slightest new bit of information for long periods of time (and that new information is often just a rumor). So you stay tuned to hear exactly what you heard in the past hour.
Originally, breaking news was for occasions like when Elvis or John Lennon died or the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City occurred. TV stations or networks would interrupt regular programming to announce it. So people became accustomed to the term being used for important events, and they would perk up and pay extra attention whenever they heard the term so as to see what was going on. TV stations eventually picked up on this and decided to start claiming that the more mundane type of events they normally report were ‘breaking news’ so as to try to get people to pay extra attention and to create the impression that they were really on top of things.
So in other words, it’s become a phony catch phrase used by TV stations (and now CNN apparently) to play on viewers’ emotions and to further promote themselves. Around here we even get breathless announcements such as “And now we have an update on breaking news we told you about three weeks ago!”
It’d be nice if someone had alerts based on subject. I’d skip sports and entertainment, myself.
I get email alerts from CNN and the Chicago Tribune. I have a separate Thunderbird folder for alerts, and I filter Trib sports alerts to my regular news folder by looking for the names of local teams.
I usually argue for broad definitions of news, but I’m with the OP here. I’ve been complaining for a pretty long time that CNN’s definition of breaking news is ridiculous. It’s the “breaking” part that’s an issue. They’ll leave their Breaking News! tag on the screen for absurd periods of time when nothing is developing. After a story breaks, if nothing changes for an hour or more, it is no longer breaking - unless you’re CNN.
One of the few positive aspects of the balloon boy thing is that it proved how true this is.
I’ve been getting the CNN alerts emailed to me for years now, and it has changed over time. They send out more now than ever, and yep, a lot of it is just BS. I am liking the alerts I get from the AP News app on my iPod - they are, imo, much more likely to be actual news (though even they succumbed when the whole Tiger Woods thing broke. Blech).
I’d also like to add in, which I forgot in my initial rage, that a lot of the “breaking news alerts” come when the news is. . . no longer breaking. The nice thing about the next or email format is that they can push something presumably faster than on broadcast.
This isn’t the case. I remember when balloon boy happened, I didn’t get the “Boy thought to be in loose balloon” text until it was already grounded and found not to contain a child. Then, I didn’t get the info that he wasn’t in the balloon for another half an hour.