The Media: Stuck in Traffic

Breaking news alert! According to a study by the Texas Transportation Institute, the frequency and intensity of traffic jams are spreading throughout the United States. Let’s see, given the growing number of lazy overweight Americans coupled with their insatiable love of stepping into an automobile, yeah I guess that makes sense. It’s almost as if the mainstream media didn’t have anything better to report on that they must stoop to covering the blatantly obvious. It’s not a new trend, I know, but it seems the major news outlets are getting blander by the day, churning out the same cookie-cutter fare: mix two parts fear and danger then add a heaping spoonful of the same crap they served up last week. If I had kids, I’d put them to bed early before I turn on the news. If you believed everything you heard on the local news, death or dismemberment awaits us around every corner and the anti-Christ just moved in next door to you. And the repetition! Do we really need half-hourly updates of a lackluster story just because it’s a slow news day? I wish the major media outlets would branch out a little more, stop trying to scare us, and get back to informing the public about what is happening in the world around them.

Which brings us back to the problem of traffic jams. Gridlock is strangling our streets; this is not newsworthy, just look out the window during rush-hour. How to reduce the mess would be a much better topic to explore. News stories looking at public transportation and city planning would actually give us something new to think about. Thanks to the Texas Transportation Institute we now know that traffic is a problem in some areas of our country. Figuring out how to wean an American family of four from owning a half-dozen SUVs is a dilemma that will have to wait for another blog.