Overuse/misuse of the term 'Breaking News'

[Lencoboy]

My brother was saying the other day that he thinks the news in general now (from pretty much all the major outlets) seems to have become nothing more than 'drama porn', where those who call themselves 'journalists' feel compelled to over-dramatise pretty much anything and everything (including the use of clichéd hyperbolic lingo) then it's all dropped like a hot potato and then on to the next big 'drama' headlines, ad infinitum.

[Lencoboy]

I know this is something that happened 35 years ago last month and the original events as they actually happened (for better or worse) generally passed me by at the time and I don't recall batting an eyelid over reports of said events.

Said events were the Lockerbie tragedy in Scotland at the end of 1988, when I was only 11 1/2, and I only vaguely recall hearing the words 'Lockerbie disaster' spoken during news bulletins on the TV, radio, etc which at the time for me were simply 'background noise', and it never even occurred to me until years later that Lockerbie was technically our '9/11 moment', especially as it was a terrorist incident that involved an aircraft.

For some strange reason (as far as I was aware at the time), I don't recall mass public hysteria and media meltdown that would no doubt ensue had said event happened today, but then again it was still before the advent of endless 24/7 rolling media, and the existing media at the time was still rather limited by today's standards.

Which brings us back to the thing about the vast overuse of 'Breaking News' banners on the main rolling news channels where the big events like Lockerbie, Hillsborough, Dunblane, the death of Princess Diana, 9/11, 7/7, and various IRA attacks, etc, all were events that genuinely warranted the 'Breaking News' thing, I heard/read they were first communicated to us via old-school 'Newsflashes' where then-current TV programming was temporarily interrupted, which I bet rarely happens nowadays what with the advent of 24/7 rolling media, etc.

Also, while I'm not in any way trivialising the Lockerbie tragedy and many others around that era, I'm kind of glad I grew up during a seemingly simpler and more carefree time where we didn't have stuff constantly beamed into our lives and expected to live on red alert all the time, which sadly seems to be the case today.