{"id":44246,"date":"2020-10-17T01:00:04","date_gmt":"2020-10-17T05:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=44246"},"modified":"2020-10-16T07:58:12","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T11:58:12","slug":"qotd-the-inherent-triviality-of-most-news-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/10\/17\/qotd-the-inherent-triviality-of-most-news-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The inherent triviality of most &#8220;news&#8221; programs"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Anyone who has ever appeared on a radio discussion programme will know how frustrating the whole business is. The time allotted even for the most serious subjects is short: a BBC producer once invited me on to a &#8220;long&#8221; discussion about the burning issue of the day, and when I asked what she meant by long, she replied with neither irony nor shame, but perfectly matter-of-factly, &#8220;Six minutes&#8221;. Since there were to be three other guests on the programme, in-depth analysis was hardly the order of the day. Brevity these days is not the soul of wit: it is the guarantor of triviality.<\/p>\n<p>Anthony Daniels, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk\/blog\/archives\/000149.php\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The European Working Time Directive &#038; the Sound-Bite Culture: why the latter makes arguing against the former impossible&#8221;, <em>The Social Affairs Unit<\/em><\/a>, 2004-08-09.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who has ever appeared on a radio discussion programme will know how frustrating the whole business is. The time allotted even for the most serious subjects is short: a BBC producer once invited me on to a &#8220;long&#8221; discussion about the burning issue of the day, and when I asked what she meant by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,41],"tags":[795,1289,101],"class_list":["post-44246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-quotations","tag-radio","tag-theodoredalrymple","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bvE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44246"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60952,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44246\/revisions\/60952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}