Disservice in Tidbits

Every half hour there is a news update on both major news-talk radio stations in the Albuquerque area. I count only 770 and 1050 AM, and not NPR because government “news” from don’t-call-it-National-Public-Radio-anymore is not really news. 770 uses ABC News and 1050 uses Fox news to provide brief national updates while the stations themselves provide local news.

I wonder to how many these brief tidbits is their only source of news. From the news wires, brief bits of news are a disservice that leads to an utter misunderstanding of much of the news because they only inform a bit, leaving almost all detail out. The worst type of news bit to listen to is on legislative matters. A typical news wire brief on new legislation often goes something like this:

The president will today sign the happy talk, sunshine and rainbows act of 2010 on a near party line democrat vote in both houses of congress. The bill will provide funding for a study of the positive effects of happy talk, sunshine and rainbows. Republicans say that sunshine is too expensive.

This kind of tidbit not only demonstrates a democrat bias from the news wire but also laziness in not informing the public properly. This laziness involves taking the title and summary of the piece of legislation at face value. Never mind that every piece of legislation coming from the Unites States congress is made up of hundreds and often thousands of pages comprised of legalese, unreadable by most of the population.

If legislation was as simple as they seem from a news radio tidbit they would not need hundreds and thousands of pages. And the problems with legislation both explicit and unintended amounting to an assault to freedom and liberty cannot be described in five seconds. Legislation is often written by unaccountable parties and debate on it in either house of congress is often done behind closed doors leading to a severely truncated time frame in which ordinary citizens cannot be made aware of what is being done in their name. This problem is the result of the “get things done” attitude.

It’s bad enough that much legislation is sold on false premises and with the aid of human props. Legislators mock those who point out that their work should be read and understood before enacted and too often only care about how their actions look from a public relations perspective. Consequences are never pondered and the legislator only worries about how to identify victims within their constituency who will “get something” from their work.

News services do their listeners no favors in presenting legislation in the same way as propagandists in congress do. No matter the intention of a bill or act, if the elements that make those intentions possible cannot be explained or even introduced along with those intentions, mentions of it should be limited. The stated intentions should also not be referred to as happening before it is even passed. Too much legislation never actually works as intended and only succeeds in helping drain the treasury. If the news were to mention a piece of legislation by name and then its intention as, you know, an intention, the user can then do the work of learning more about it if the news won’t tell them. This method will inform the listeners instead of cheerleading big government.