THE NETWORK THAT CRIED WOLF

If you never saw the anti-Fox News documentary "Outfoxed," rest assured that it was really, really bad. So bad that some I know who were moved by "Fahrenheit 9/11" found "Outfoxed" unconvincing.

But one critique made sense to me: that Fox abuses their whoooosh-gong! News Alerts. Here's a late October post by John Little at Blogs of War, who clearly agrees.

What the hell? Rita Cosby just ran a FOX News Alert for the 5 hour old Tom Ridge announcement that the terror alert level will not be raised.

Damn they're getting annoying. They’re better than the rest but still annoying. Why don't you guys at FOX try reserving the alerts for actual news for a change.

This is true, but they also use it for "actual news" of a trivial nature &mdash most recently and egregiously, the Scott Peterson trial. I suppose I could be talked into believing the News Alert was warranted &mdash once only &mdash when the verdict came in. But please, not when the judge denies a change of venue motion. James Lileks agrees too, and he remembers a fonder time when

a Special Bulletin would make you soil your drawers. They didn’t break in for anything. When you heard the words "We interrupt this program," the best you could hope for was an assassination.

Fox is of course not alone, to paraphrase Pat Moynihan, in defining news down (though they are the industry leader). Or to paraphrase The Incredibles, when every news story is important, none of them are.