What is TMI?
TMI is Too Much Information.
For those who do not remember, and that would be most of you, the days of Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, John Chancellor, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Jessica Savitch, Nancy Dickerson, and a long list of many more very distinguished journalists, use your computer search engine and go learn something. You now have the ability at your finger tips. Go investigate on your own without being fed information by a bunch of talking heads what they think you should know.
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, an almost constant bombardment of information about anything and everything. We are given salvo after salvo of whatever event that will fill minutes and hours of information.
In the days of the aforementioned news broadcasters, news was brought to you in a chosen manner from people who decided who of you had a need to know and of what. You were given top stories from around the world that gave you enough information to not appear illiterate and able to engage in spontaneous conversation. After all, what could you do about events in another country ten thousand miles away that you had never been to.
Your local news and local newspapers gave you the current events and tragedies that happened in your town or city. You may even have know the people. Now that was real news you could sink your teeth into. That was not TMI, that was something you felt you were a part of. These were events that perhaps you could correct or at the least have a voice in.
There was far less angst with that type of news coverage. Not to say bad news was not reported. It frequently was. But it seemed to be understood that you could growl about it and move on. It was a given, you could not fix it and no one wanted to engage in your argument. So, minutes after watching the program, it was forgotten. Until the next day, and the cycle was repeated.
Then, we discovered the internet, and satellites provided hundreds of channels to providers who were looking for ways to profit from content they could send to us. Cable News. Or more accurately, opinion television. Dozens upon dozens of television channels that billed themselves as news channels, when in fact they provided 24 hours a day 365 days a year coverage of biased and usually inaccurate information.
The whole media world became a pile on of misinformation. Internet web sites permitting users to spread innuendo and rumors, local television repeating the inaccuracies of national channels, radio programs sweeping up the crumbs and now everyone was an expert on everything. There was no need to compare notes on what was being given as fact. You could trust those honest and informed talking heads that had experts telling the facts.
Now you knew exactly what was happening in that little town in Missouri, even if it was three thousand miles from you and you had never even driven through it. You knew what the crisis was in that little country somewhere in Asia. They had a hurricane or something and we must keep them in our thoughts and minds.
This is TMI (Too Much Information). It has no affect on you. There is little or nothing you can do about it. The events in your life will not depend on anything that happens there. The real effect of all this information is it has given some bad people real power because of the influence these stories have on our psyche'. Old propaganda playbooks still work and they are still used. Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it.
Why do we aspire to fix everyone else's problems? I think it must be something human. But, I think we all need to empty out our own closets and reorganize them first. You think?
Dennis Farrell
Opinion