Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I finally realize why I can’t watch the news on television: the information flow is relatively slow.

I haven’t watched news on television in years. I stay abreast of the issues of the day via reading from the Internet. I scan probably a dozen major news sites as well as about a hundred blogs every day.

Over the holidays, I spent a week with relatives. They still watch the news on television. I would sit through maybe the first two minutes before I could stand it no longer and would leave the room. Most of the stories were silly (man bites dog); all the stories were poorly reported.

I realized the problem in this situation: the information flows too slowly on television news, at least too slowly for my taste. A person reporting the news can only speak so fast. I can read or scan text news much faster and in the past several years I have grown accustomed to that speed. Listening to someone read the news hurts my head.

Given the slow speed of speech, the news stations can only report a little news in their 22 minutes (8 minutes of commercials per half hour). The big cable networks state a story and then host an “in-depth discussion of four experts.” Each expert has about two minutes to comment on the story. They speak slowly as well. During the ten-minute discussion I can scan half a dozen well written analyses of the story written from as many countries.

Alas, one day television news may switch to a form of speed speaking or something so that they information flow rises to the standard of the Internet.