Traverse City Record-Eagle

Betty Werth

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October 12, 2007

Disturbing signs of the times

BY BETTY WERTH

I don't know much about football, but when U-M and Notre Dame's teams both lost one weekend, and the Lions won, one of my co-workers said, "Good heavens. It's Armageddon."

I knew God would send a sign, but I never thought he'd do it through sports. If it were me, I think I would have put it on the "E!" channel. It could come across at the bottom of the screen, something like "... Britney Spears dodges cameras ... Osama turns himself in ... God announces end of the world ... "

Frankly, when I read that one out of every four adults had not picked up a book in the previous year I took that as a sign. The end must be near.

But wait a minute. Do we know for sure whether that last statistic is up or down? Did we read the whole story or just the headline?

One of the most frustrating aspects of this "information age" is that we have both too much information and too little. Tiny, unsubstantiated, out-of-context factoids flow out of the 24-hour news machine like popped kernels out of a corn kettle -- tantalizing and instantly supplanted by more of the same. Information comes fast, frequently wrong, until it's no wonder adults have stopped reading books. We can't take any more input; we're choking on it.

Besides, books take too long and require too much thought. We don't even read newspapers. No time. We have a national case of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

When I was learning the craft of journalism, every story had to answer six questions: who, what, when, where, why and how. The goals were three: accuracy, accuracy and accuracy. Now, every viewpoint has a counterpoint or two or three. Never mind that two or three of those make no sense, or are refuted by evidence. A lie is as good as the truth if, as former President Bill Clinton once pointed out, "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is."

And accuracy has been shunted aside by speed. It's "We report, you decide," which sounds good unless it really means "We" have no idea where the truth lies and no interest in taking the time to find it. "'We' will tell you in a 60-second sound bite that the federal deficit is the largest it has ever been and the national housing market is collapsing, but you decide what it means because 'we' are already on to an hour-long report on Britney Spears."

Let's see, a three-day investigative series on Anna Nicole Smith's baby's parentage against a two-minute report on the war in Iraq and no coverage at all on Afghanistan: Which is more important? "We" report, YOU decide.

I see on the TV crawler that Blackwater's gunfight with Iraqi -- wait -- American Idol's new season will fea -- wait -- Britney is losing her chil -- wait -- Sen. Craig is fighting his guilty pl -- wow. Busy news day.

Now what were we talking about? Armageddon? A sign of the end? Gee, I don't see it. If God wants to warn us with a sign, I'd suggest one that's neatly lettered, with nice short words that come across on the crawler.

Reach Betty Werth at bwestrope@hotmail.com.

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