By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine:
When a major story like Virginia Tech breaks, viewers linger, wanting to know more. There's nothing wrong with that expectation. But having committed to going wall-to-wall with the Cho murders, the networks are too cowardly to tell viewers that only 30 minutes of essential Cho story exists, and that viewers should feel free to turn their sets off after they watch that much. Instead, the networks added soy extender and sawdust to inflate 30 minutes of solid news into a six- or seven-hour marathon.
There's a path around this quandary. In his book The Language of New Media, scholar Allen Bells reports how the BBC responded in 1930 when it was confronted with a 'shortage of news deemed worthy to broadcast.' The Beeb didn't dress up yesterday's broadcast with new comments from another expert. Instead, the announcer would admit, 'There is no news tonight.'
If only today's broadcasters were as honest.
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