To the editor:

All the news that isn’t news.

It is said, “Ignorance is bliss.” I don’t know who said it, probably some ignorant person.

However, he may be right. I think we get too much news.

Now I’m not knocking our local newspapers because I think they do a much better job than the TV news. Thankfully our newspapers tell us good news about good folks. TV news isn’t news at all.

They take some trivial little thing and blow it up to make it sound exciting. If necessary they pull something out from the files that is years old and suddenly it is exclusively their own news. It gets me when they announce some tragedy and smile ear to ear while reporting it.

Nothing like Walter Winchell and Edward R. Murrow back in the ’40’s. They told it like it was and got off the air in 30 minutes. The cigarette dangling out of their mouths was just an extra touch.

Most of all they covered everything that was important to know.

Even Walter said one night, “The same thing happened today that happened yesterday.”

If something like that occurred today we would probably hear, “There is no news tonight, we will fill the remaining hour with commercials about your bowel moments.”

I figure anything that happens more than ten miles away from me is no concern of mine.

If it happens after nine o’clock at night it doesn’t concern me either; I’m in bed. If I can’t contribute to the solution then I figure I don’t need to know. Is that cynical?

No, it’s just my age. Sure it is tragic to those involved but I don’t lay awake at night worrying about how many people were killed in Indianapolis last night.

But it is the mean, dirty, discussing things that make the TV news. And worst of all they make hour long programs out of it.

Maybe some time they will report, “Little Johnny Jones walked to school today without getting shot. He got there unharmed without being bullied and proudly handed in his homework that he and his father worked on last night.”

Now that’s news.

Don Hill

Seymour