For months on end the lead news story on the CBC was some report or another about how our Syrian Rebels were faring out.
At every juncture it was made clear that our Syrian Rebels were not like our Libyan Rebels and that in any event Syria was not Libya.
All of this could be categorized under the label of Real Fake News.
It's real in the sense that there is in fact a rise-up of some sort against Syrian President al-Assad.
It's fake whenever you extrapolate away from that to some sort of big-picture fantasy about Arab Spring.
But overall it loosely qualifies as news.
Lately CBC has cut away from Syria to cover the latest developments in Tori's Trial.
Tori was a little girl abducted a year ago in Woodstock. Her body was found a month later. One of the perpetrators is set to go to trial soon. That's why a national news program will devote its top shelf to a story about how Tori's parents feel about this.
They feel really bad, and have for over a year.
That is undoubtedly true, but is it news?
Has there ever been a parent of a murdered child who wasn't devastated by their loss? But is their suffering "news"?
Is their suffering newsworthy enough to pre-empt the story of a revolution in the most volatile part of the planet?
And on the pre-emption continuum, once we pass fake news we get to the land of the conspiracy theory.
When there is a real news story that can't be shuffled aside by fake news, we give it the label of "conspiracy theory."
That's the news we ignore but for whatever reason it doesn't go away.
Maybe it doesn't go away because it should have been real news.
I wrote a post six months ago about Seven World Trade Center, a project I worked on. It continues to be the most viewed post on this blog. It hints at an abiding mystery; how do ten ton steel beams give way after having been exposed to a minor fire for a few hours?
That blog post has been relegated to the realm of the conspiracy theory.
Serious media never have to address such a question because it's not real news, not fake news, it's a conspiracy theory.
Just like how a terrorist's passport floats safely to earth while a black box can never be found is a question that will never have to be answered because it has been relegated to the realm of the conspiracy theory.
What I'd like to see on the news is less about people's feelings and more answers to hard questions.
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