Okay so, we all have pet peeves, and one of mine is getting a news alert, something labeled "Breaking News" and then for the next two hours I get the same story from 10 different news sources. It seems to me things are getting a little out of control, and perhaps this is one of the problems of having news media apps on personal tech devices, or subscribing to e-mail news lists of various media outlets. Someone needs to fix this problem because it's getting so ridiculous, it's completely over the top, and it is a waste of our time as users to have to keep deleting everything. Okay so let's talk.
Someone needs to come up with an app which scans all the words of the media news alert that you get, and does not deliver duplicate "breaking news stories" from multiple media venues. Let's say you take the New York Times, your local paper, the USA Today, and a couple of TV news stations' e-mail notifications, or subscribe to their apps. In this case, if a famous person died for instance, the app would scan all the information in it and if there was no new information from the last breaking news alert from a different media outlet, it would simply send it to the deleted box.
Let me give you an example of why I even chose to write this article. The other day I felt an earthquake, it wasn't more than about 40 miles away. Within 3 minutes, I got a news alert that there was a 5.5 earthquake near here. I got this news alert before I even had time to go over to the computer to search Cal Tech's online earthquake reports, something that folks in California do a lot. Then, for what must have been an hour and a half I kept getting breaking news alerts from all sorts of news organizations including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Miami Herald.
Yes, I realize that these newspapers are pretty far away, and it probably isn't a real big issue for them, but it sure seemed like a lot of nonsense for me, after all, I felt the thing over an hour and a half ago, I don't need someone to tell me there was an earthquake. Further, it looked as if they were all duplicates, as if the Associated Press had typed it up and given into all the newspapers, and they merely replayed it to all their subscribers' e-mail boxes. Enough is enough. Please consider all this and think on it.
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