My brother Glen, who is otherwise sane, becomes rather rabid when an event such as pop singer Michael Jackson's alleged frolicking with pre-teens on his Neverland Ranch crowds what he refers to as legitimate news into Never Ever Land.
What's all the fuss, he fumes, and then follows with a comparison to the various seismic happenings that impact the world, such as war, famine and monetary machinations, all seemingly of importance to the most casual observer.
Why doesn't the news media get it, he asks?
Of our siblings, one supposes Glen is the scholar -along with a sister, Joy, who has more higher degrees than I have toes. He managed to accumulate letters in both accounting and law in less time than it took me to pass Freshman English.
To complete the picture, there is another brother, Alan, who runs automobile auctions in various regions, and probably knows an overhead cam from an overhead projector. I wouldn't know what mechanical body cavity to re-insert an oil stick for the life of me.
I am merely a scribe.
A reporter. A newspaper guy, or at least I was until I "sold out" and went into the PR business. My friend Lewis Lord, contributing editor to U.S. News and World Report, however, salves my conscience. He says
I "cashed in."
This is debatable, and is certainly one of those proverbial distinctions without a difference. However, it is from this platform I adjudicate what is and what is not a legitimate news story. My credentials, while over-rated, are beyond suspicion.
"Glen," I argued over breakfast at The Drum, "Michael Jackson is a news story."
"Is not."
"Is."
"Is not."
"Is."
And so on and so forth in brotherly combat. through at least two cups of coffee, fries, eggs sunny up and beans, the final being a breakfast addition we Americans question, but the British seem to think natural as fog and rain and Mark & Spencer sales.
I explain, as best I can to the sincerely obtuse, that wars, famine and economic juggling are rather common place, and have been since the dawn of man. Their occurrence neither stimulates nor titillates in a media anesthetized world.
In fact, one of the first things you learn as a cub reporter is that dog biting man is a yawn, but man biting dog is a news story. Irony sells.
Hence, a 45-year-old milky white Afro American superstar sleeping with near toddlers is the type of story to which many of us turn, even prior to the one with an even scarier headline about Prince Charles and Camille.
It is, metaphorically speaking, man biting dog, in that why would someone with so much to lose act so carelessly and so freakishly.
In Ukraine, "man bites dog" with regularity, with enthusiasm, and with raging impunity. Though most journalists probably don't think about it, to be a news gatherer here has to be the high-cotton of reporting, the Super Bowl of story-dom.
Take, for instance, the visual picture of two former Soviet republic, Russia and Ukraine, facing it off over 35 hectares of Crimean island called Tuzla. Or the three-year-old story of the missing journalist, made more sensational by the find of a headless corpse.
Then there was former prime minister, Victor Yushchenko, having his visit to the Donbass region derailed because of partisan and regional protests, an act by the Administration that virtually insured the former National Bank head being
a momentary martyr.
For neon irony, nothing beats the continuing story about a member of the President's own security team electronically bugging him, and the leader being heard using locker room language about a laundry list of items he would have preferred kept secret,
There is tragic irony in the fact that automobile accidents seem to claim an uncanny number of Ukrainian politicians, or, the recent story about a Rada member's car being involved in not one, but two fatal accidents in a short period of time.
Irony, of course, is only one element used in the commission of news. Others are equally important, though not nearly as whimsical in application.
For example, news is also relative as to what else is happening. I once wrote a wire service story about a single fatality tornado that for two hours was the biggest story on the planet, leading the United Press International's headlines for 120 minutes.
And, it is a fact that bad news pushes good news off the airwaves and below the fold of the front pages. KILLER STRIKES AGAIN has infinitely more punch than KILLER GOES DAYS WITHOUT NEW VICTIM.
Finally, news must, indeed, be "new". It must invoke a "wow" or "that's interesting" from the listener, viewer or reader.
My brother, the lawyer, would argue that Jocko's toddler tampering story failed to reach any of the heretofore mentioned markers. It wasn't relevant, considering the other big news of the week.
Irony, he would say, was tossed out the window as well as "newness" because Jackson had shown himself to be a case of serial weirdness. Nothing new here, he would say.
"Is."
"Is not."
"Is"
"Is not."
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