Must Be A Slow News Day

By Keith Boykin, in pop culture
Thursday, May 18 2006, 3:31PM

If you were watching CNN Headline News in the past hour, you may have noticed a lot of coverage of a car chase. No it wasn't O.J. Simpson speeding down the California freeway again. Instead, it was a garden variety car chase in Texas. CNN Headline News spent almost the entire 30 minute broadcast covering the car chase without a commercial break. In the end the suspect was apprehended and arrested, but it raises a question: Is this really news?

If you've been paying attention to the 24 hour news channels lately, you've probably noticed that the so-called news has been reduced to an endless stream of repetition, lurching back and forth between car chases, snippets of political conflict, and cases of missing people. With our government involved in three wars at the same time (the war on terror, the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War), Nancy Grace still manages to devote nearly every one of her shows to the case of the missing woman in Aruba. And CNN's Lou Dobbs, bless his heart, seems to talk about nothing other than immigration.

I'm not surprised by any of this. The news business has become increasingly repetitive, competitive and sensationalistic. In reality, I'm already used to it. I was not the least bit surprised to see the car chase on CNN. It's very compelling drama to watch the police live in action as they pursue a suspect. Entire television shows have been created around police pursuits. And I'm sure a lot of people will watch it.

But I still have to ask. Is it national news?

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