What’s the Story on Breaking News Stories that…

Think about what types of news stories are important in your life. Why do they matter to you?

As far back as I can remember, I can recall certain moments in my life where the news interrupted our daily regular activities with a “SPECIAL NEWS REPORT!”.

Rarely did that happen in print, the interruption, I mean. It was mostly on television - unexpectedly cutting into a program you were watching with those words written across the screen in a bright red. The voice behind the screen would say something like, “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special news report…”. No matter what you were doing you’d stop and pay attention. It was a pretty big deal.

I grew up in a small town and we had a newspaper that served our city and surrounding areas called The Daily Press. It included local news and what’s happening across the globe in its 4, maybe 5 pages of print. National, Local, Sports, Community, Obituaries, Personal Ads, Comics and Weather, all of that in 4 to 5 pages. As you can guess, the news source was very limited in the space they had to report it so we got a couple stories on world events and more about what’s happening locally.

But the “special news reports”, whoa, those were indeed, “special”. It was immediate and in your face! They caught your attention with the intrusion of your favorite episode of The Brady Bunch reruns. Just as Marcia was beaned in the nose by a football Greg threw, causing her nose to swell up to a rosy red hue, which then caused her hot and popular date for the school dance to cancel on her because “something suddenly came up”, which at that very moment absolutely ruined her life and… oh, I digress!

The other thing that made you realize these were a big deal was that adults would stop what they were doing and slowly gather around the television to watch the report unfold in living color.

The stories I remember this happening for were quite severe. Each and every one of them deservedly requiring this rare network action.

I’ll list them now how I remember seeing the special news report in chronological order:

ELVIS PRESLEY DIES! – When Elvis died in August, 1977, I was 12 years old. My mom was vacuuming in our living room with the television on in the background. When this report hit the screen, she stopped the machine and dropped to her knees and began to cry. I remember being slightly confused, I mean, I knew who Elvis was, but I didn’t know she knew him! I would later realize this was a normal reaction to hearing of the demise of someone you adored from afar.

JOHN LENNON MURDERED! – I was 15 when this news broke in a cold December day for us on the West Coast. We were just starting class and all the televisions bracketed to the walls of the social studies or history classrooms were turned on to the “special news bulletin”. I remember my teacher, Mrs. Jones, crying at her desk. She was about 37 in 1980, which now makes all the sense in the world to me. He was murdered by a crazed fan late in the evening on the 8th of December, just after finishing what would be his latest and last album release, Double Fantasy.

7 DEAD IN CHALLENGER SPACE SHUTTLE EXPLOSION! – In January, 1986, the awful news of that day was sprawled across all of the televisions in the video/audio and video rental store I worked in when I was 20. This one had no television show interruption, as it happened live on television in a live broadcast on the CNN news network. It would go on to play over and over again, all day. I worked 8 hours in the store and the day was so gray and dim. People would walk in and sit in the comfy chairs we had in our display room to watch the news, look at the grim footage, listen to the commentaries, cry, then leave after they’ve had their fill. By the 7thhour, I was done. It was so sad.

REAGAN SHOT, RUSHED TO HOSPITAL IN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT! – I don’t recall where I was when this news hit the screen, but I remember them showing the footage over and over. This news interrupted some people’s normal viewing that day, when it was reported by several news agencies.

However, in their rush to be the first to report the news, ABC announced the assassination attempt with the wrong information, stating the president was not shot and that three others were. This rush to be first to report news, resulting in inaccurate information being reported, would go on to happen to other news reporting agencies throughout the course of attempting to be first to report the breaking news.

When President Ronald Reagan survived this attempt on his life, his approval ratings went through the roof, securing him a second term after winning the presidential run for office by a landslide victory over Walter Mondale, the democrat party’s choice that year.

There were a lot of special news broadcasts that I remember happening in my youth and into my adulthood, and it was almost always a big deal. Pope John Paul II was shot, Egyptian President Mohammad Anwar Sadat was assassinated, the Iran hostages being released, Ricky Nelson’s plane crash, and later in my life George Harrison’s death from cancer.

The untimely deaths of Prince to an accidental drug overdose, David Bowie to cancer, Glen Frey to ongoing intestinal issues, George Michael due to poor health, all reached the news in all forms of news media, and all in the year 2016.

In 2009, the special news report that entered into your morning talk show was about how Farrah Fawcett had succumbed to cancer. It was supposed to be the big news that day, until about an hour later…

MICHAEL JACKSON DEAD AT 50! – This news broke into my computer screen. I was at work, online for business reasons, and after I had clicked on the news of Farrah, this one exploded on top of that one. And for the first time in my life… the world stopped.

I stared at the screen, read the story and quickly cross referenced it to other news sources to make sure it was not a joke, and when I realized it was true, started to cry.

It finally made me understand why my mom cried when Elvis died, and why Mrs. Jones was crying for John Lennon. Because they had just lost someone whom they held dear to their hearts, and whose careers they followed for decades. Suddenly, and without warning, the news of his passing was exposed to me in a cold and information filled breaking news flash.

It was shocking.

It was devastating.

And, it was news.

In the past week, what news stories caught your attention? Why were they interesting or important?

I am a sucker for “click-bate”, I guess. The headlines are often long, and then the title will run off the page just as it’s explaining what the story is about. You’re left wondering, no, yearning to know what it is that happened? You’ve got to know. You hesitate in clicking the title, because you know you’re going to be bombarded with ads and notices of cookies being served. But such is the world today for those interested in finding out what’s going on and not having a paid subscription to any tangible news.

This last week the news that caught my eye, resulting in clicking that link to the stories where they reside are the following:

Tom Hanks is promoting his latest film, Elvis, where he portrays Col. Tom Parker, the iconic long-time manager of Elvis Presley. The click-bait was about the bus stop bench scenes in Forrest Gump, the movie about a dim-witted guy who stumbles into fame and fortune which took the world by storm back in 1994. The title? “Tom Hanks admits doubts over ‘Forrest Gump’ bus bench scenes”. The reason I clicked on it? I thought to myself, “What on earth could Tom doubt about those incredible bus stop bench scenes? They were all amazingly relevant to the storyline! So, that one caught my attention.

The headline for one of the news stories that caught my attention this last week was posted like so:

“Macy Gray and Bette Midler face backlash for comments criticized as transphobic”.

Now, I’m still aware of who Macy Gray is, or was, with her one hit, “I Try” back in 1999, so I don’t think her words regarding her short-sighted comments, thoughts and concerns of how being a woman isn’t just an operation away. She is saying that you have to live the “little girl life” to understand the womanhood that comes from it.

Bette Midler? I was a little more upset about Bette because she’s an icon. She has/had the luxury of having a huge gay following and being supported by gays early in her career when she used to perform at gay bathhouses (with a young Barry Manilow as her pianist). I bring up the gay following because gay is the ‘G’ and trans is the ‘T’ in LGBTQ. We are united in our fight against discrimination of anyone’s rights – gay, straight, black, brown, poor, rich, etc.

Being a woman or man does not hinge solely on the word that is used to present you. Your actions and contributions to society and what you have done as a person defines who you are. How can a word being used to describe a person who has corrected her body (physically) to represent the way she feels (and has felt like her entire life) rob anyone of their own identity? Is it because she had to go under the knife to be the gender she knew she always was? How is referring to herself as a woman going to affect you and how you feel about yourself? Are they that insecure? Does the use of that word in the trans community rob them of their womanhood? Ridiculous. It comes off as a sad case of basic prejudice.

Finally, a headline titled, “Highland Park parade mass shooting was planned for weeks” piqued my interest because I was at a highly attended fireworks display at the historic Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, CA. I was working for guest services and mentioned to a co-worker off handedly, “I am so glad that there are metal detectors here, that the guests must enter through, as these are the types of events those sickos who commit mass shootings are attracted to”. I had no idea that a sicko had already done so earlier in the day.

I am continuously sickened by the never-ending mass shootings that occur every day in our country and no one in the party that controls whether bills pertaining to any type of gun control will make it to a vote in the senate, because they fear the lobbyists for the NRA, and the fallout from a minority group in the GOP party. These ‘bought-and-sold’ politicians are the ones who have blood on their hands when these shootings occur, as they let this go unchecked over and over again, for years and years.

One of the definitions of the word ‘insane’ is “doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome". That’s insane. When you think about it, it’s completely insane to keep doing this. When will the insanity stop?

What criteria do you use to decide to give these stories your attention?

Obviously, the story headline has to pique my interest. I have to already want to know about, or have an ongoing interest in, the subject to click on it. Of course, that’s not always the case. I am sometimes brought in by the horror of the breaking story. Whether it’s mass gun shootings, the gun restrictions that are consistently discussed after said events and how it seems to just be a story on a never-ending loop.

A mass shooting by a lone gunman into a crowd of innocent people is the story on a loop. Just enter different victims. A crowd at a outdoor concert in Las Vegas can become a crowd at an Independence Day Parade, who can become a group of people praying in a church in Charleston, SC., who can become a bunch of 5-year-old children enjoying their last day of school at Robb Elementary before summer vacation, and so on and so on and so on. It’s an ongoing loop. Questions about the ease of purchasing these automatic rifles go unanswered and continue to be an unimportant priority to the GOP. The insanity will continue until someone who has the power to create actual change stands up to this ongoing inaction.

When I look back on the news that interested me as I was growing up, or the breaking news stories that secured a home in the archives of my brain, I am amazed that, except for technology, not much has changed. I still read a ton of political news. I still update myself with the latest celebrity gossip, and pay attention to the decisions made that will have an affect in my life, or those whom I love and care for.

It's easy to watch the news and be entertained with the accompanying videos or fancy presentations, but to read the news and the in-depth coverage provided, and to absorb the information provided which was written by a journalist who really wants to get the facts correctly reported, which will most likely impact many people's lives... well, that's news on an entirely different level! It's highly investigated, factually presented journalism at its best. Which I now know is what I want to be a part of.

Citations/References:

John Lennon Death Announced by Howard Cosell - https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/entertainment/hard-to-go-back-to-the-game-john-lennons-death-announced-on-monday-night-football-40-years-ago-today/77-71fd1711-a818-4f61-a12e-38c995106dbb

The Challenger Explosion - https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/31/us/80s-cnn-challenger-coverage/index.html

Pope John Paul II Assassination Attempt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaSeFjPWIzg

Reagan Assassination Attempt - https://youtu.be/-B9nVmQOlRU

Michael Jackson / Farrah Fawcett - https://youtu.be/YR8Fpec0VeU

Tom Hanks - https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/28/entertainment/tom-hanks-forrest-gump-interview-intl-scli/?dicbo=v2-2aabe8a846e1d1422b3ddd2efb32725a&hpt=ob_blogfooterold

Macy Gray / Bette Midler - https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/05/entertainment/bette-midler-macy-gray-transgender/index.html