And another thing

Of course, despite my comments on the good parts of the CNN coverage (namely CNN's ability to put a person and a camera on any street corner in the world and put the image on your TV set in realtime) I have to admit a lot of it is crap. But I keep watching it anyway, despite the fact that I could get most of the information from my beloved web, which I'm rapidly focusing on as a center for my future scholarship (go go information society Andy!). Why is this?

I suspect that part of the draw of TV in a time like this is the illusion of presence. The CNN talking head in my living room, even if he or she is just repeating the same headline from 5 or 10 minutes ago, gives me the feeling that I am in the loop. That there is this person here, who will tell me if anything happens, and that that same person is being relied on by the important and the powerful. Therefore, I too am informed, important and powerful.

We new-media types probably need to consider that.