Much of ABC News is Fluff

I have Sunday and Monday nights off, so the rest of the week I am at work during the 6:30 pm network news shows. Today I decided to watch the ABC News with Diane Sawyer, expecting a synopsis of the major news stories in the country and around the world for today. But instead, I got mostly a news magazine show.

The news began correctly as a news show, with the initial story being the sad news about the tragic death of an auto racer during a race yesterday in Nevada. But as the program wore on, I began to wonder just who was making the decisions as to which stories to run. After a segment about how phone companies are now to be more tightly regulated in order to avoid "shock billing" (a legitimate news story belonging on the evening news), the show deteriorated a little more than halfway through with light, human interest stories more appropriate to topically-based shows like 60 Minutes or 20/20. There was a segment about the Lakota Indian children of South Dakota and how they are struggling, in the midst of their poverty and their society's pervasive alcoholism, to carve out a future for themselves. Very compelling, I thought, but not exactly what I would call a major news story. Then Ms. Sawyer told us that the Earth was about to reach the milestone of seven billion people. She tried to put this into historical perspective, first pointing out that in 1960 the figure was estimated to be only three billion. She then went further back in time, even to the eras of Jesus and Cleopatra. During the days of Jesus, the world's population supposedly stood at around 220 million while even further back during Cleopatra's time it was only 15 million. Uh, wait a minute...wasn't Cleopatra a contemporary of Octavian, who was still the emperor of Rome when Jesus was born? So Cleopatra and Jesus were only a few decades apart, but the population went from 15 million to 220 million in the same time span? Really, Diane?

The final segment of the "news" was devoted to how some kids in some dying backwoods town set up a non-profit store that helped to supply some of the needs of its largely elderly residents. Another feel-good story, but does it really merit the evening news?

I think that I'll just stick to other sources for my news from now on.