Amateur detectives – TV news channels

TV's 24/7 news channels (especialy FOX News) fill their hours playing amateur detective when they can't find any real news. Let a U.S. girl disappear in Aruba and Greta Van Susteren and her cohorts are on it in a flash -- for hours, daily. They know just whom the authorities should have detailned, what questions they should have asked, and where they should have looked. Do they do any harm? They do if you seriously watch this stuff. With media technology they can find, daily a murder, mysterious disappearance, or violent crime to tickle the appetite for the bizarre and the gruesome. Applying the editorial preference for spectacular bad news, they're like the newspaper's police blotter on steriods. Thank goodness your peace of mind and world view do not depend on FOX News or CNN. Their programming resembles that of the New York Times famous masthead phrase, with an added phrase: "All the news that's fit to print" . . . and a whole lot more that isn't.