I’ve noticed the past few weeks that when I watch local television news, I’m seeing stories that are at least several days old in the blogsphere.
It reminds me of when I took Current Events in high school. The class was my favorite as we were required to bring news stories to class and then share them every day. You weren’t allowed to bring a newspaper but were supposed to watch the news the night before and take notes.
I aced this class the two years I took it. But I remember a day when a student stood up and told about a news story that had actually been in the news a couple of weeks earlier. Another guy made the crack “Leon, you got an old tv at home?” Leon didn’t know what he was talking about and said “uh, no”. “Well you must cause that’s an old story”.
Tonight Action News 5 teased a story I read on the internet well over a week ago. The story about the phony FBI e-mail that started circulating before Thanksgiving that contained a virus. The story made the news in the blog world in mid-November and by the 22nd was already the subject of websites.
Tonight though, AN5 called it a “new e-mail hoax that may contain a virus” or something like that.
Ratings are over, I must be watching a post-sweeps rerun. Funny thing though is that if WMC is reporting it tonight it must have made the AP wire or NBC wire. No telling how many stations were reporting that old news.
UPDATE: I found the source of tonight’s news, it’s not about announcing this new e-mail virus, but explaining that it may now be the world’s largest computer worm. The sober worm virus ranks as the top virus of November, accounting for about 43% of all viruses being reported. It comes with a note either from the FBI or CIA or advertising something about Paris Hilton.
Still, the story tonight was more about warning people about the virus instead of this new information.