What is news

Dear Diary:

I watch the PBS Newshour almost every day live and online. 

Last week the show featured interviews with newspaper editors from around the country.  Asked what their readers thought about Trump, I was struck by how much gray area there was – undiscovered gray area that never makes it into the experts (pros and cons) that PBS often presents.  Good job. 

But Monday (2/28/2017), the show spent a lot of time talking about the Trump-Russian connection and the new health care plan.  After two segments the gist of the Russian connection story was “nobody knows anything so we have to investigate further.”  The health care story ran nearly as long and ended up with “nobody knows what’s going to happen.”  My feeling was this may be what people are talking about, but there’s no news here. 

On the Politics Monday segment, I wish Judy Woodruff would have followed up on two comments.  First, when one of the two commentators said no one expects the President’s budget, which was just announced, to be the final word, and secondly, when the other commentator suggested that concerns over Obama’s competency when first elected in 2009 was probably greater than Trump’s, Judy sat mum and moved on.

This isn’t fake news or old time spin, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t news either.

FG       2/28/2017