Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for June 06, 2024

I heard the news today, oh boy . . .

we have the news in our pocket, constantly

Those were the days, local news and 1/2 hour of world news!

We also had Walter Cronkite.

Close but no cigar. We’re likely to be watching less news than my boomerhood because the six or late night news were a special thing, just like Saturday morning cartoons were more special than the 24 hour toon channels.

That said, with the dedicated news channels and other continuous sources, it’s become required to not only broadcast the big stories but inflate every story from every angle.

Things haven’t changed. You can watch a full hour these days and still get less than half an hour of real news.

Better than Walter Cronkite, we had Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC, and Sam Donaldson over on ABC. Beginning with Dan (what’s the frequency) Rather, and about the same time with the other networks, the first vestiges of Communist Party propaganda began making its way into the “fair and balanced” news coverage.

Back then is was factual news, today just the opinions of the news as the individual network sees fit, OBJECTIVITY is out the window, something we were taught was very important!

I remember when the 3 major broadcast networks upped their news shows from 15 minutes to half an hour. That was back in the Late Pleistocene, IIRC.

CNN, the 24 hour news network, has been around since 1980 (44 years), so that’s going back a couple of generations. Even before that, many television stations featured local newscasts several times a day, many radio stations had hourly news updates, and most people had access to a newspaper. In addition, TV networks would occasionally interrupt their regularly scheduled programs for special news bulletins. So there was always more news out there than just the daily half hour network news broadcasts.

They also had actual news, since they were required to present both sides equally.

Prior prior generations sat down with newspapers for 1/2 hr every evening.

News? What news? All ya gets is biased paid propaganda.

Rat, think about how you can stand horizontally on a mountain. THAT should cheer you up.

Huntley/Brinkly started out at 15 minutes.

It’s true. Prior to cable TV, there were more reporters covering more stories in fewer reports. Now it is a constant bombardment of the same 2 or 3 bits of news over and over again. It’s been estimated that by the 80s, the reporting of murders had increased 600 times even though murders themselves had actually decreased. And now it’s nonstop.

Don’t forget newspapers. Just because you had to wait a day to get some stories doesn’t mean they were less important, or less accurately reported.

Peanuts on D-Day: gocomics.Com/peanuts/2024/06/06

On 18 April 1930, the BBC announcer on the 8:45 bulletin actually declared “there is no news”. What a day to be alive.

I think at one time Huntley Brinkley were a quarter hour. That is still about the amount of time it take to get actual news each day. …and why do we have to have a report on the airlines every single night? huh?

But on the plus side, Rat has learned to defy gravity!

Easy peasy Rat—don’t watch the news! I don’t, I just read the comics, and I know someone will be kind enough mention whatever horrendous thing is making news at the moment.

Ah, those were the days.

The news has never been real. It has ALWAYS been propaganda; that is, told from a particular perspective. It is impossible to to not do so. Information is ALWAYS and HAS ALWAYS BEEN omitted or added that changes how the report can be interpreted.

All we really need is another Paul Harvey. 5 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes at lunch.

Twice daily newspapers! News without the drama.

It’s all Ted Turner’s fault….

It speaks volumes about the state of the world during the 50’s when there was only a 1/2 hour of world news. Not enough going on to bother with any more than that.

This is so true! My MIL thinks things are “so much worse” because she hears/sees the same bad news story multiple times in a day.

People read newspapers!

And they didn’t tell you what the Dow Jones was every day

Woke up fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head.

Despite remembering news pre-Internet, I’m still not old enough to remember only having one half-hour segment a day. On the local NBC station we had while I was growing up, morning news ran from 5:30-7am, then later was the news at noon. Evening news was a full hour broken into 30 minute segments from 5 until 6pm, then the national news with Brokaw at 6:30pm. Then the local news was back at 11pm. Plus the occasional ‘breaking news’ interruptions, which you never wanted to see because they were always about something awful.

Today, there is STILL only 30 minutes of real news per day. But the stations have to fill up time, so we get Human Interest stories and re-re-repeats of previous days’ “news” ad nauseum.

Some people hardly ever got any news!

We also had presenters and reporters who spoke with proper grammar and diction and who could string more than three words together in a coherent sentence. Without bias.

I am a recovering news junkie. I now limit myself to reading online subscriptions to three international newspapers and watching 1/2 hour of local news on television daily.

Prior generations also didn’t spend time surfing the internet looking for stories to be pi$$ed off about.

We got a 30 minute local news program at 6:00 am, again at 12:00 noon, 5:00 pm, and 11:00 pm. There was typically an hour long news program at 6:00 pm. 3 hours of news a day, at least, on television.Then we got news on the radio all day.

evening news was 1/2 hour local and 1/2 hour national. You did have news programs at times and those were well watched.

But it was only a few options and MUCH less alarmism to bring in viewers.

Now we get 24/7 talking head punditry and right or left slanted news stories.

Looks like the latest release of critical information about the assassination of JFK indicates more than one shooter. Definitely what we were told (in sworn testimony) at the time was that Lee Harvey Oswold (with a $12 rifle) was the sole shooter. Also…the media was especially kind to FDR regarding his wheel chair etc. When have we not been mis-informed and misled by the media?

But don’t forget newspapers which would come out in multiple editions each day, “yellow journalism,” magazines, etc etc

Typically, even back then, there were approximately 3 hours of news a day. A morning show, noon news, World News at 5, local news at 6 and 10pm. The morning show was the longest while the rest were 30 minutes.

don’t watch!

…aaaand…we have Faux “News”!

Or someone coming through their town and reading a newspaper aloud to them.

Sometimes weeks or months AFTER it happened!!

I fully appreciate the sentiment, but I recall TV news being an overview at noon, a half-hour at supper, and an hour before bed (just for restful sleeps). If you were listening to the radio, a headline overview every hour. Still pretty wide open and pleasant compared to today’s 24 hour “news”.

And before television even less than a half hour…

The off button has always existed.

Just watch only a half-hour of news. Or better yet, don’t watch the news at all. Checkmate!

Now, that’s a sterile reply.

I remember Uncle Walter from when Kennedy was shot in Dallas. I was in my HS History class when the news came in over the loudspeaker.

And it was delivered by actual journalists who did a quaint thing called fact checking.And there were hundreds of newspapers, many independently owned and operated.And delivering the news was seen as a public service, not just another way to make a buck.And all the media outlets were not owned by a handful of billionaires.And we weren’t up to our eyeballs in self-annointed “pundits” paid to talk convincingly for maybe 30 seconds on things they knew nothing about.

I should know. I was there.

And Edward R. Murrow.

He’s not wrong. There is such a thing as information overload. I believe in strictly limiting consumption of news.

Prior generations further back only had news in papers and as gossip and it was usually partially inaccurate and weeks out of date.

There IS no news. There is only propaganda. All media is owned by a relative handful of billionaires who use media to further their own agendas.

Yep. Now everything is a GD commercial.

Not only was there a limited time when news was available; not only were there responsible people delivering it; we were also smart enough not to wallow in other people’s business 24/7.

As to greed, greed is a game of spoons. In case you’ve never played: the players gather ’round a table, on which a number of spoons equal to one less than the number of player is laid out, with the handles alternating direction. Then the deck is dealt out among the players. Play begins by a single card being drawn from the dealers hand and passed feverishly fast to the player on his right, who does likewise with the aim of getting five of a kind. During this, if you can quietly sneak a spoon off the table you place it next to you. AS soon as someone notices they make a dive for a spoon starting everyone else diving for a spoon. The one left without a spoon is out of the game, the number of spoons is reduced by one and the game continues. See? As soon as one person starts something that brings in more money EVERYbody dives for the same thing. And here we are.

I still only watch a half hour of news. That’s all the news I need

And people actually read newspapers too.

We had Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.

Why not keep copies of documents and a spare compliment of meds there all the time??

I don’t get it; he’s a boar, not a donkey.

A half hour of TELEVISION NEWS, but there was still radio

And in the 1970’s,WNEW-TV had Dr.Martin Abend;theprecursor of a MAGA.

Stewart Klein usually put him in his place,Thank Goodness

No news is good news.

Not true. Commonly, there were 15 minutes news reports every hour until 10. Then news at 5, 6 and 11 PM. Plus at least two newspapers a day. Radio had news reports every hour and some every half hour as well. Then there were full news programs, like Today, 60 Minutes, and Weekend Update.