Say What?

With former White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan's "tell all" book just out we're watching yet again a pattern of news that has become the norm over the past years. It starts with "breaking news," which lasts about five minutes until every media outlet and blogger in the entire world has hold of it, and moves quickly to "yes, I've heard," when the public is still calling friends on the cell phones to tell them about it. That lasts a couple of hours. The rest of the day is taken up with people desperately switching back and forth between CNN and MSNBC while they squeeze every last bit of juice from it, and then begins the final phase, "dragging it through the dirt," which can last for weeks, or until Amy Winehouse wets her pants in some bar somewhere and there's new breaking news. Why do they call it "news?" As a friend of mine once pointed out, it should be called olds, as in "have you watched Charlie Gibson lately on the Evening Olds?"