Too much media

When I was with my doctor yesterday, we talked candidly about treatment, death, even our shared dislike of the media. I opened the topic by asking about presidential candidate John McCain; I saw an interviewer bait him with a question about his run-in with “the most lethal form of skin cancer.”

“Did he have melanoma?” I asked her.

“Yes,” and she spoke briefly about his publicly disclosed diagnosis. “The NY Times asked me to comment on it, but I hadn’t seen his medical records. I refused to speculate about it for them.”

I was so proud of her. I know she has an opinion; she has an opinion about everything! And she’s a melanoma specialist. But she has way too much integrity to get dragged into an event where the news media generates the news.

In fact, that happens most of the time: News media simply can’t stand to sit still. If nothing incendiary is happening of its own accord, they stir something up so they can report it. It truly infuriates me.

I wake up to news radio in the morning. It’s better than a buzzer alarm because it doesn’t stop if I happen to keep sleeping, and it’s really noxious noise. Eventually I have to get up, and in the process, I pick up on the really “big” stories of the day. Often though, I find myself yelling back at the announcers. I can’t stand their smirky innuendo.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to have gotten a lot worse in recent years.