Why is the news so full of...

Why is the news so full of things that haven't happened? I mean, they all call it "news," but it isn't, is it. The papers and the networks write and write and talk and talk about polls showing what the news might be in another week. Senator Obama might win, he might be winning, there might be big news in another week. The papers and the networks write and write and talk and talk about the possible temperature in the future, about the possible rise in the ocean waters. The temperature is going down now and the oceans aren't pouring over their banks, but they might, there might be big news in another fifty years.

I even heard on the radio this afternoon that the Dow Jones average might have lost over a 1000 points today -- it only lost 321 points, yes, but this reporter said the Dow very well might have lost over 1000 had the selling continued at the early rate. What kind of crazy reporting is this? News about not only things that might happen in the future, but news about what actually didn't happen. And polling... endless polling until people stop talking or start lying to the pollsters.

Sometimes don't you just long for the days when it took awhile for the news to make itself known across the country? Polls couldn't be news then -- who would want to read about a poll taken weeks ago when the election is already over. Back then, the news was more about what had happened and a lot less about what was about to happen.

When all reports are about what's going to happen, people get upset when it doesn't play out the way it was played up. If Senator McCain wins the election (which he easily might, just by carrying the same states President Bush did in 2004), Democrats will demand answers -- and they won't demand them from the folks who predicted the news instead of reporting it; they'll demand them from the courts and from Congress because they are being assured, today, that the unowned future is theirs, as if the future were a public bridge being sold to a gullible tourist.