Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.

-Ben Hecht

A quickie update: seems there are many who are having similar thoughts.

http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&catid=&topic=8

While it may have been staid and a little stodgy, the old CBC had a ton of good content and listening to The World At Six used to leave me with more a feeling of being informed.

I made a mistake: I watched some television news. I must have been bored, or I would have left the room. Wait, I never get bored. It must be some twisted sense of nostalgia and longing for a time when I felt as though I at least had an inkling of what was going on in the world, and that through the lens of newspapers, radio and television. I think most people don’t like being in the room with me when i watch news, or listen to it on the radio, given that there’s this almost constant stream of what I would call counter comment and frequent interjections of judgment of value stemming from variations on bovine excrement. Yesterday, there was an unbelievable tsunami of hand-wringing and chatter over the eventual disappearance of the penny: no one mentioned a thing about devaluation and debasement. There was much gushing about Beyoncé and her performance, including an extended piece on Newsworld about a new biopic about the performer, something we could expect from the entertainment shows, but hardly worthy of a mention on a serious news network. There were reports of missing people who are still missing, missing pets who’ve been found and a ton of human interest stories that paper over the very real shabbiness in the fabric of society. There was, lo and behold, a story about an IPP on the north end of Vancouver Island, but a failure to mention the terms of the contract which, typically, includes provision for the buying of the resulting electricity by BC Hydro at multiples of the market rates at which the utility will be able to sell the power, and, to cap it off, much time for Minister to spout about possible changing conditions that mean that these IPPs will be a bargain in the future. But the absolute killer was when the ominous music came through the set, that Daah duh-duh-duh daah dhu-duh-duh daah that tells me that we’re into the next Olympic cycle/blitz, and that all media will be devoting precious resources to the least related Olympic factoids. At least this time around, the proceedings will be held in a venue far enough not to affect events in this lovely neck of the woods.