There’s no getting around it, whether you’re talking about “hard” news, “soft” news, secret weapons technology, prototype 37c reviews, or the latest, greatest laundry detergents — people love intrigue and an air of mystery.
So a great deal of what we see or read as “news” is often just repackaged information stirred around and “freshened up” to gain readership or viewers.
For example, last week nearly every television network showed a video clip of a bus driver at night who stopped just short of a toddler who was sitting in the middle of a dark street by herself. The driver got out of the bus and walked up to the little girl. As he was speaking to her, a man (later proven to be the tot’s father) came running into the street, picked her up, and took her back into the house.
Shocking story, right? Shocking video, too.
And the video, as well as the story, was OVER A YEAR OLD. There was absolutely no reason to show that video during any recent news cycle. And none of the television stations showing it mentioned it was a year old, until the second day it was being shown. By then, the facts had come out that there was an ongoing custody battle between the parents and the state over the future of that toddler (now beyond the toddler stage) and her sibling(s). A state judge was getting ready to make a ruling, and some enterprising news people ran onto the year-old footage online (I think) and wanted to get attention by showing it.
News is, indeed, often all in the packaging.