I spent a good portion of this morning in a waiting room, and as expected, during this time I had to endure an inordinate amount of morning news (our local FOX affiliate, to be specific).
To clarify, I really hate morning news, mostly because it’s 150% hype that’s more designed to stir up viewers and ratings than actually disseminate information like the news was originally intended to do. In between stories featuring the dog with the biggest ears in the world and something or other about supermoms, one particular farce that rubbed me the wrong way was their “coverage” of the issues that the US Postal Service is currently facing.
The Facts:
- A lot less people use the post office these days, mostly due to the Internet.
- They need to make some serious changes if they want to remain afloat.
- Dropping Saturday service is one option, along with allowing them the ability to renegotiate contracts that they’re currently locked into.
The Morning News Spin:
- “OMG!!! THE POSTAL SERVICE MIGHT BE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS – WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU DIDN’T HAVE THE POST OFFICE ANYMORE?!?!?!”
I mean, any reasonable person would take a look at our modern society and realize that things aren’t the way they used to be in when the post office first opened back in 1775. Sure, not everybody has computers and uses the Internet, but an ever-increasing majority of people do and thus you can’t honestly expect them to be able to continue operating in a manner that’s neither efficient nor financially possible. They’re not exactly held steadfast to that whole “through rain and snow and dark of night…” mantra these days, either!
It would be one thing if everybody looked through these things like I do, plucking the few random facts and leaving the hype to the side for what it is, but a lot of people hear this kind of crap and actually buy into it as an accurate assessment of the situation, and then they go out and spread that misinformation to other people, and use it when they vote, and so forth. All because a TV editor thought that it made for an intriguing 90-second clip to cite that “above all else, we used to be able to rely on the mail getting through, but that may be changing…”