A vivid childhood memory for me that I think about every time I hear the phrase "in the news" are the shorts CBS used to run during Saturday morning cartoons during commercial breaks. Here is a long compilation.
Generally these bugged me--I didn't want to hear what they had to say and wanted my cartoon back on.
Something I've been thinking about is what does it take for something to be news.
Perhaps a measure of the relevancy and importance of something that is "news" (newsworthiness) is the answer to this puzzle: Imagine rescuing someone from a desert island. How long could they have been there such that a particular piece of news is still topical and worthy to tell them?
Given enough time anything of great importance in the moment will eventually fade into the background of oblivion. Its relevance will disappear.
I would suggest that 90% of news is entertainment and 90% of that entertainment is to one degree or another proverbial porn. On balance the most popular sources are simply NDDs (nonsense delivery devices), GDDs (gossip delivery devices), or PDDs (propaganda delivery devices).
Consider this a corollary to this post.
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