How to spot bad news

I’ve spent my professional life digging up and reporting news. My notebooks have seen more true tall tales, more inspirational people, and more homicidal crooks, slimy politicians and idiots than would fit in a thousand of these 180-word essays.

So we won’t catalog the past. We’ll address the stuff that, today, is treated as news but is boring or harmful. Or isn’t news at all.

Here’s a gimme: reports framed solely around inflated or manufactured conflict, usually in politics or public policy. Watch as I stick a finger down my throat.

And this subset of conflict news: anything any former president says about any current officeholder’s performance. Time to write, package and publish? Ten minutes. Actual value? Zero.

Also: how the Twitterati react to anything a permanent or temporary public figure said or did. Just dumb.

One more: anti-mask, anti-vax preachers, talk-radio yackers and moms and dads who get covid-19 and die. Clichés are boring, and this genre of news became cliché in record time.

When we click on or watch this dreck-cum-news, we reward and encourage its creators. Don’t.