Are We News Yet?

News. Or what passes nowawdays for news. I don't know - if a teenager from Alabama comes to a dicey end in a Caribbean country, well...let's call it news, for the sake of her local station, but it shouldn't really captivate an entire country for 9 or 10 months.

News? That a 13-year old boy set up a webcam in his bedroom and filmed himself performing erotic acts and accepting Visa, MasterCard and Discover from older men as payment to view said erotic acts? Perhaps that's news for a minute, if only to illustrate that there are no depths to which a desperate teen won't sink to earn a bit of pocket money (and you can just hear the parents in the background...webcam? what in tarnation is a webcam?)

A writer pens what is billed a "memoir" yet assiduous fact checking reveals that this memoir is heavily embroidered in a fiction-y lace - is this news? Not really, although Oprah found it newsworthy enough to devote an entire show to castigating the author for "disappointing" her and her largely incredulous and barely literate viewing public with the sad but common proof that he was indeed a man with feet of clay. Entire prides of scholarly footnotes have protested with placards of shock and disbelief yet no one has noticed their plight. Fiction-y moments have joined in the protest all the same but to no avail.

This isn't news. This isn't newsworthy. These are manufactured stories meant to simultaneously placate and magnify the fears of middle America. That webcam you buy - well, that can and probably will be used by your teenager for pornographic and/or monetary purposes; the Caribbean trip you allow your 18 year old daughter to take- well, that will rebound back to smack you in the ass with a disappearing and probably dead child; and the innocent book you might possibly buy - well, if you can't trust a memoir these days what can you trust? Fiction? Something entirely invented? Ooh, very dicey.

When did we become the most incredulous insanely trusting and pretty flat out stupid people on the planet, hands down? Does anybody question anything anymore? (Much as That Guy should really have questioned why exactly Oprah wanted him on the show, and much as those guys should have questioned why a 13 year old accepted credit cards for webcam nookie. The Caribbean thing seems to be a spot of bad luck, so I'm not sure her parents should be castigated for letting her go on the trip).

I'm all about the "something smells fishy here" movement when it comes to news. I apply the principle myself every day. When listening to a mainstream new story, right along with the journalistic questions of who, what, where, why & when, I always like to add "who benefits?"

Just in case someone other than me is keeping tabs.