The past is now....

This morning, I was looking through the news online, and realized that the word, news, no longer has the same meaning that it did ten or twenty years ago.

Back in the dark ages of broadcasting, when everything wasn't condensed into a ten second sound bite, you learned about important world events on the news. The weighty subject matter was delivered by serious reporters like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, who understood the importance of the information they were imparting, and took their position in the eye of the nation seriously. They researched and covered their stories from the start to the finish, and when Walter told us, "And that's the way it is," we knew it was. They were not there to entertain us - they left that job to Bob Hope and Lucille Ball.

There was this thing called "In Depth Reporting," where they dug into the issues of the story, found out the basic questions that were vital to our understanding, and then presented it to the public. They weren't necessarily the first to report it, but that seemed to matter less than whether or not they had the facts and the important information, so that when they were done, the public had been fully informed. The news was filled with stories that we, the people, needed to know to create a more perfect union. Or something like that.

A very famous Truman moment aside, I think Watergate was the first time, at least in my recollection, when being first truly began to trump being accurate. It was a slippery slope, the intoxicating need to be first at all costs, but we didn't fling ourselves down into the abyss with reckless abandon, at least at first.

It was more of a slow and mushy slide, like when it's 42 degrees, and the snow is melting, all sloppy and sticky, until today we are drowning in irrelevancy. Being first is the only thing that counts. It no longer seems to matter if the content is even interesting, to say nothing of important, so long as they said it or did it or wrote it or experienced it first.

Maybe I am just crabby, but these days, it seems like the news is a poorly disguised imitation of a gossip column, filled with innuendo and hearsay, but containing very little in the way of hard facts. We look down upon the medieval period as the Dark Ages, but I'm not so sure we aren't in our own intellectual desert today.

This morning, as I was perusing the headlines, I was astonished to discover that among other critical matters, I could see photos of the backsides of roughly 40 actresses, and it was my job to guess to whom they belonged. I was so fascinated at the idea that someone would actually consider this worthy of notice, sort of like being drawn to stare at a car accident even though you don't really want to see it, that I couldn't help myself. I had to look.

Of course, I didn't recognize half the names, to begin with. I am not exactly what my younger friends would call up-to-date. And I am thankful to report I didn't recognize a single butt cheek or crack hanging out of what currently passes for a swimsuit. [Seriously, someone should take these girls aside and explain to them the concept of mystery and imagination.] The only thing the story left uncovered [*ahem] was why I needed that information in the first place.

I am genuinely appalled to report that CNN expended less words on the massive health care overhaul bill passed by the United States House of Representatives last night than they did on a review of a bad movie starring George Clooney, the point of which seems to be that it doesn't have one. We are looking at a situation in which every American could be forced, under penalty of fines and jail time, no less, to purchase health insurance, whether we want it or not, whether we can afford it or not, and all that the news outlets can think to discuss is George Clooney's relationship with a goat?

There is a pandemic of H1N1 currently striking people down all over the world, but most Americans couldn't define pandemic to save their lives. Call me old fashioned, but I think we should at least be able to explain a thing before we panic about it. Perhaps if we were more literate, we would be less likely to be driven by the whims of the mass media.

While Brad and Angelina flit around the world with the paparazzi chronicling their every move, we know literally nothing about what is going on in the People's Republic of China, the largest, most populous nation on the planet.

Is Malawi important because Madonna went there? Or did Madonna go to Malawi because it is important? Why does Malawi even matter to us? We don't know, because the only thing the media told us is that the Material Girl is adopting another unfortunate child whose parents cannot afford to feed it.

That is not a knock against Madonna. On the contrary, at least she took the problem seriously enough to go and see for herself. Which sadly, is what is required if you really want to know about something in these days of 24/7 news cycles.

Shouldn't we be asking why there are so many orphans and abandoned children in Africa? Shouldn't we want to understand what is behind the sound bite that makes it important enough to bring to the attention of the world populace? Isn't there a reason that movie stars are going to Africa to adopt a child every other day? Call me crazy, but I happen to think that is the real story, one to which we don't have the answers.

Sadly, I think Madonna might agree. But she will never have the chance to get her message out, because the media, driven by the consumer, is only interested in whether or not her divorce from Guy Ritchie is final, or if she had an opportunity to work out so she can keep her 20 year old figure on her 50 something body in one of the poorest places on the planet.

That seems to be the current definition of the news you need to know. Count me out.

What is most disturbing to me is that even when the media makes the attempt to bring a serious story to us, they miss the facts and go for the fluff. In a story about the psychiatrist who shot dozens of people at Fort Hood, today's offering was a statement from a relative in Palestine, who apparently hasn't seen him in 15 years, although that particular fact was buried in the very fine print deep in the article, and whose offering, boiled down in a paraphrase, amounted to, "Who knows?"

I, for one, do not consider that newsworthy, and if that is all you have, don't even bother. Save the story until you have something solid, something concrete, something that will inform or enlighten or at least lead us forward. I don't want speculation, third and fourth hand non-witnesses describing what the suspect had for breakfast that morning.

I don't care what was in his stomach, I care what was in his mind. What could have led him to a mental perspective where shooting dozens of people on a military base seemed like a reasonable objective? And are there others out there like him? As far as I am concerned, the most important thing about this story is how we can learn from it so it won't happen again.

That is not to say that I am uninterested in the human interest story, the lighthearted anecdote, the chuckle. But don't call it news. And don't devote 24 hours a day to it, because you have nothing else to talk about.

I swear I am not just getting old and cranky, Andy Rooney in panties. I feel that it is to our extreme detriment, indeed, even our peril, that Americans, in particular, remain so ignorant of world events, and their significance.

While we obsess about Kate and A-Rod house hunting together, our military men and women are fighting a war in Afghanistan against not just long odds, but historically significant odds. How many Americans have any knowledge of the long history that is found there? Or how that history may affect the outcome of a battle today?

Although we may recognize the name Genghis Khan, do we know whether or not he ever invaded Afghanistan? Do we understand the ramifications of the Cold War on the region? Or the outcome of the war the Soviet Union fought there a couple of decades ago? How did Osama bin Laden come to be in Afghanistan? Have they ever been our allies? What was our part in bringing them to where they are today?

These are all important considerations to understanding the Afghanistan of the here and now. It's not a simple matter of right and wrong, win or lose. It is a very complex region with a long and complicated history, which cannot be reduced to a twenty second sound bite.

Our demands for instant gratification will not win the day, or the war, in a region that measures its history in millennia instead of a couple hundred years. And the prosecution of that war certainly should not be driven by polls taken amongst people who can't even locate the country on a map.

I love the internet for everything it brings to my life. It allows me to talk to people hundreds of miles away as if I'm having a conversation, a sentence or two at a time. It brings information, if only I am interested enough to look for it, into my living room at the click of a mouse. It allows me to work from my own home office, because everything I need to do my job effectively is available online 24 hours a day.

But the downside of the cyberworld is the sense of false urgency it creates. The constant need for updates, for something more, for the media to produce scoop after scoop, has also created an artificial need for information that has vastly outpaced our human ability to make sense of events. The incessant drive for something else has spilled over into every aspect of our lives, and the pressure we are all under on a constant basis is almost intolerable to me.

It is that climate which makes someone with no talent and no real achievements a celebrity. The rich and famous of today are not known because of their accomplishments, but because they are the quickest at thinking up new ways to draw the camera's eye towards themselves. Call me a cynic, but it is hard to imagine Ashlee Simpson or The Real Desperate Housewives of Wherever They are From leading us into a better future.

For those whose interest has been piqued, Genghis Khan and his army of Mongol warriors invaded the area now known as Afghanistan in the 13th century in a grab for the riches of the region, which they needed to support their growing power base. He directed the murder of thousands of people in his effort to subdue them, in some cases, wiping out every living thing, plant, animal and human, for hundreds of square miles.

His soldiers destroyed property, including a massive irrigation system which had allowed the area to be one of the most productive in that region of Asia, leaving devastation and destruction in their wake. He ruled with little regard for the indigenous people, which created his deserved reputation for barbarism and cruelty. The Mongols ruled ruthlessly during Khan's lifetime and beyond, as his kingdom was split apart into khanates.

And yet, despite his most strenuous efforts, he was unable to eliminate the spread of Islam, which had already taken root, and was flourishing there. When the Mongol dynasty had been overtaken by the next band of marauding tyrants, and Genghis Khan and his descendants were just a part of history, Islam remained, as it does to this day. Their faith is the foundation of their very lives, stretching back for a millennium. I don't know about you, but that certainly puts things in a different perspective for me.

News is not measured in moments, it is measured in decades and centuries. In the end, the wise will prevail, and the stupid will fail. From where I am sitting, the wisest nations worry less about celebrity than they do about history, because those who do not understand where others have gone awry are doomed to repeat the failures.

It's not as fun as "News of the Weird," but it's probably the news we need to hear. And that's the way it is.