From: radioacti...@gmail.com   
      
   Perhaps some clarification of my above-posted out-of-hand dismissal of this   
   era's emotive young (pseudo) broadcast journalists is warranted:   
      
   The 20-, 30- and 40-something newscaster voices we hear dispensing the radio   
   reports these days--and even more so on TV--just LOVE to constantly   
   virtue-signal to us news consumers, never realizing how profoundly they're   
   inconsiderately insulting their    
   audiences (and in the process delivering besmirched broadcasts).   
      
   That is, they irresponsibly--and oh-so-unprofessionally--feel compelled to   
   layer audible inflection onto whatever words they're reading in their copy,   
   and especially so if someone other than themselves wrote those words.  Thus,   
   rather than merely    
   dispassionately informing us that, say, "At least seventeen students heading   
   home plus their driver were killed when their school bus careened off a steep   
   embankment in western Colorado this afternoon..."   
      
   But, strongly implying we in the audience are just too darned stupid to   
   realize that that reported event is a serious tragedy (even if negligence was   
   not a factor), these poorly-trained broadcasters always can be counted upon to   
   add audible tension to    
   their voices, telegraphing to us feeble-minded listeners that THEY recognize   
   how sad this unfortunate development is, and thus hoping we will EVEN MORE   
   appreciate that truly astute people are stewarding that microphone,   
   enlightening us ignoramuses out    
   here in the sticks who would otherwise remain utterly clueless about our   
   modern, complex society without them shining their metaphorical broadcast   
   light on events.  (And often, they'll even add further insult to their   
   condescending presentation by    
   tossing in some "tag" along the order of tsk-tsking "What a sad, sad event."   
   before moving on to the next story they'll verbally riff on.   
      
   (And if, in this fictive example, a terrorist strike happened to cause the   
   horrific bus crash, they'll probably STILL mis-apply the word "tragedy" as   
   well--suggesting at least to cynical little ol' me that they snoozed through   
   English class the day their    
   teacher covered the definition of the APPROPRIATE word, i.e., "atrocity".)   
      
   As to what all this is rooted in, my theory--kindly refute it if you can,   
   please--is that they're envious of all those ubiquitous opinion-dispensing   
   talking-heads nowadays, and thusly ever desirous of letting us simple folk [to   
   their thinking] know that    
   THEY TOO possess incisive, critical-thinking minds.  (Minds, mind you, which   
   never bothered to learn the middle-school-level noun "atrocity".)   
      
   Thank G-d that sterling broadcast journalists like the late Tom Foty always   
   knew better than those generations following him to ever so talk down to his   
   audience, always instead letting the listeners decide for THEMSELVES how to   
   appropriately react    
   mentally to a given story that neither he nor the audience witnessed.   
      
   BRYAN STYBLE/Florida   
   ===================   
   * And this sad syndrome is ever-evident not merely in those voices actually on   
   the air somewhere, but also in the tone and words of nearly every (and   
   typically quite amateur-sounding) podcaster droning on ponderously and   
   endlessly** in those persistently-   
   pretentious presentations now littering every street corner of the mass-media   
   landscape.   
   ** Y'know, there's REALLY something to be said for the constraints broadcast   
   formats impose, forcing a voice finally shut up at the end of the show's   
   time-slot...whereas podcasters (thanks to Moore's Law***) can just go on and   
   on and on and on.  AND do    
   so.   
   *** Due ALSO to the absence of what ANYONE yakking into a microphone should   
   bear ALWAYS bear in mind every moment that red light is on:  how weary the   
   listener may be getting of still aurally sopping up whatever is being   
   said--and, you can safely bet,    
   the more inexperienced the speaker, the more redundant their so-called   
   content:  "Oh, and before we wrap this up, let me make more clear..."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)