Dear Cecil,
Recently the news has been reporting flooding in Venezuela, the country’s worst “in recent history”. What’s up with that? And why was it brought to us in an “in-depth summary”??? Who comes up with this stuff? I humbly thank you in advance for your enlightenment.
-The Artist Formerly Known as Mitch
Yeah, I too found that in-depth summary unsatisfying.
I guess I’ll have to wait for that disaster to be on “World’s Floodingest Floods” for it to truly get the detailed news treatment we all expect.
Recent history = What people who are alive can still remember
A US parallel would be that World War II is still “Recent memory”, but the Great Depression is starting to fall out of that category.
Recent history = what people who are important can still remember.
Who decides who is “important?” Why advertisers and pollsters, of course.
In America, recent history is Clinton’s second term, maybe stretching back to Bush. Kennedy (JFK) is of the same fantasy era as George Washington, Henry VIII, and Elvis - ‘before the real world began.’
Actually, I read Mitch’s OP to be a questioning of the laxity (or absence) of reporters’ regard for detail and/or their viewers’ intelligence. ‘Worst floods in Venezuelan history’ means something; ‘worst floods in recent history’ is so loose that it is only slightly more useful than ‘worst floods since last time.’
‘In-depth summary’ is an oxymoron that a true news service “should” be ashamed to offer, for the instant realization it would engender that they are undeserving of the appellation “journalists.” It IS, however, quite in keeping with the sensational and sensationalized world of sound-byte repeating, ambulance-chasing, horse-race glorifying, violent crime-seeking, analysis-free infotainment “news” that most people today mistake for journalism.
THAT’S what I thought Mitch was asking: who is responsible for this idiocy. Not just: what is the accepted definition of recent history.
{:-Df wrote:
Wait a minute, Clinton’s second term doesn’t stretch back to Bush!
Hey, it’s a flood, right? so the “in-depth” summary means it’s a summary from, oh, say, two or three meters under the water surface, right?
tracer: Okay, let me rephrase.
“In America, ‘recent history’ (as used by the youthful cohort alluded to just above) most-often seems to refer to a period starting with Clinton’s second term, but maybe in some cases, depending upon the speaker, stretching back to the Bush Administration.”
Actually, rather than just playing with this topic, let’s be semi-serious for a moment: if you heard your local news report use the term “recent history,” and in the absence of other context, what would you assume was meant?
I’d say that the 90s about covers it! It seems that the Gulf War is about to recede into that historical middleground that now holds the Vietnam War. Anything previous to WWI is just ‘history,’ or ‘ancient history,’ and ‘useful only to ivory-tower intellectuals who got sidetracked on the road of life.’ To a ten-year-old, I bet WWII, even, is as ancient history as the War of the Roses.
Whatcha think?
Dex: Glub! (But you’re probably right: it was only a matter of time before infotainment came to be written more for laughs and less for ‘info,’ and maybe that time is now.)