It's probably a result of being a person who works in media, but I find an awful lot to be annoyed with in television news broadcasts, especially cable. Most of the time, I just don't watch because I don't need the blood pressure spike. But in recent weeks, with the re-emergence of the JonBenet Ramsey case, everything that I loathe about the way news gets done in our time has been shoved to the forefront.

Now, with the news that John Mark Karr apparently had nothing to do with anything related to this girl's death, I keep wondering if any of the news organizations that gave this non-story such obscenely constant and completely un-examined coverage will be issuing public apologies. I think they should. But somehow I doubt it will happen.

In any case, Dan and I have both enjoyed a couple of pieces of media criticism that the Christian Science Monitor has written in recent weeks examining how it has come to be that a story like this can come to receive more coverage than, I don't know, genocide in Africa or that pesky war we're still involved in in Iraq.

I think that this and this are good reading on the topic. So read if you want. They're saying it better than I can. Especially since my head will explode if I think about it much longer.