The Column: 'Breaking news' was in need of repair

Did you hear? CNN is cutting back on breaking news.

It’s not that the world suddenly has settled down.

Not a chance.

Ukraine, gas prices, inflation, baby formula, gun violence and COVID-19, which, no matter how much we pretend, shows no sign of surrender. We’re still stuck in high-stress central.

But new management at CNN is putting things in perspective.

“We are truth-tellers, focused on informing, not alarming our viewers,” CEO Christopher Licht said in a note obtained by Axios, the online news site. From now on, said Licht, the “breaking news” banner would appear only when “something BIG is happening.”

Good idea. Matters were getting out of hand.

How so?

Poynter, a media studies organization, noted that CNN some time ago put the “breaking news” label on a story about the 102nd anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

After hours of supposedly urgent updates and sensational scoops, regular viewers of CNN might have been excused for calming their nerves with a dose of New York cannabis — now legal; far out — or switching to Cartoon Network.

No more of that, says Licht. With stale stuff getting overhyped “its impact has been lost on the audience.”

Exactly.

When it comes to news, I am a strict constructionist, standing humbly in alliance with Thomas Jefferson, who knew that journalism was — or should be — a serious business.

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter,” said Jefferson.

Some may see intrinsic value in the box office earnings of “Top Gun: Maverick” or McDonald’s launch of a Chocolatey Pretzel McFlurry or — how darling — the decision by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to make public a photo of their daughter, Lilibet Diana, on occasion of the child’s first birthday.

Perfectly all right, news judgment varies, but at my cable news network — as yet to be acquired — those stories belong in the last 15 minutes of an hourlong broadcast or, at a newspaper, somewhere between the obits and legal notices.

Treachery, malfeasance, upheaval — ah, that’s news to me. Write about trouble so the trouble can be addressed and those without a voice find one.

“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” as the old newspaper saying goes.

I remember when you would be watching TV and the word “bulletin” came on the screen. Mostly it meant something momentous had happened. You could feel your heart stutter. Now it could be a report that a fellow at Disneyland Paris was interrupted by an employee while proposing to his girlfriend in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

Of course, this sort of thinking may be why I was not voted “most fun to be around” in high school or why family and friends, searching for a way to characterize me, fall silent for several seconds until someone says, oh, well, maybe a little, er, you know, neurotic?

Too late to lighten up. I am holding my ground.

Anyway, there are bigger issues associated with the new CNN policy.

Licht was worried about exaggeration. Plenty gets blown out proportion. We are in the age of hot-dogging and chutzpah.

There is a brand of cat litter called World’s Best, and a reality talent show by the same name, and also a World’s Best website where it is possible to buy a handbag of gold Epsom leather for $35,500.

World’s best? Who says?

Even baseball is beset.

Celebrations after home runs are so extravagant you wonder how sluggers survive the season what with knocks on the helmet, chest bumps, dugout dances and forearm smashes.

Can there possibly be as many “honor students” as the bumper stickers claim? Are drivers who have vanity plates like SEXYTME kidding themselves? Whose idea was it to dream up a fast-food, triple bacon burger with a 1,220-calorie count?

All right, here’s a confession.

I’m occasionally given to excess myself. Hard to believe, I’m sure.

“Oh, come on, Dad,” my kids say when we are debating some topical subject. “It is not a sign of moral decline, the collapse of democracy and approach of end-times just because men wear tassel loafers and no socks.”

Yeah, I suppose.

OK, I’m human. Breaking news.