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Breaking News! Black Lives Matter vs COVID19 vs Election 2020!

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Protests for racial justice continued throughout the country.

Businesses are racing to announce their corporate policies for justice and equality.

New polling reports that a majority of American support the protests and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Even military brass support renaming military installations named after Confederate generals. 

New York City opened up showing bold determination to aim toward normalcy

Over a dozen states are reporting increased cases of COVID-19.

President Trump expressed that policy brutality is committed by a few bad apples.

Attorney General William Barr and others denied that systemic racism exists in law enforcement. 

Over 40 million Americans have lost their jobs. 

Over 150 COVID-19 vaccine efforts are underway.

Major League Baseball still has no agreement between owners and players because of the usual obstacle.

HBO Max pulled Gone with the Wind because of its sanitized portrayal of slavery in the antebellum south.

Polling shows that presumed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden continues to gain strength.


Gone!

All of these items occurred just within the past week.  The news cycle is exploding.  Every item is a Page 1 ‘above the fold’ story, but only 1 or 2 can be accommodated. There is simply an avalanche of real breaking news these days.  This is in contrast to CNN, where Breaking News, with it’s bold red font, is used to introduce every newscast, and is often sprinkled throughout their programs.  Of course, if every report is Breaking News or is a Crisis or is Unprecedented then these terms have no meaning.  Fox News has it’s own Fox News Alert designation, but in their defense it is utilized much more sparingly.

But, in the past week and months, we are all struggling to follow so many truly monumental and evolving stories simultaneously.  And we and the media may not have the bandwidth or the attention span to absorb them all.  Since the George Floyd murder and the subsequent protests, the coronavirus pandemic was pushed aside, even though it is still a page 1 story here and abroad. And soon I expect that the protests, even if still present, will be edged out by an event or a controversy that hasn’t yet occurred. 

There’s a whirlwind of information bombarding us in real time   How do we prioritize the news?  How closely should we follow the stories?  How do we know that our news sources are trustworthy?  Do we have the skill and the desire to separate out the static and the noise?  (One man’s static is another man's...)  

When every story is ‘breaking news’ does it mean that the news business itself might be broken?



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