>>I just get concerned sometimes, on slow news days when some "man bites dog" story gets picked up by a news service. Makes you wonder if it's some cub reporter at a local affiliate, who was too busy choking down her lunchtime burrito to make it to the scene on time, so she ended up interviewing the local gossip, who won't admit the deputy wouldn't talk to him so he had to "enhance" the story a little based on what he could see around the corner and past the crime scene tape.
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>I'm more concerned when they do it on a busy news day, when the Congress passes a 1500 pages law without reading... or so I think I heard, because there were any number of silly stories that would take 7 or 8 minutes for absolutely no good reason, while the legislative action went completely unnoticed.
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>Or so I hear - my wife still has the patience to listen to some news in the morning (NPR), sometimes even gets as far as 15 minutes into the BBC news before she's just had enough.

1500 pages?!? You must be joking... rule #1 of the media is that the viewer has the attention span of a goldfish.