News Flash, Literally

I attended a town hall meeting here in Qatar, at Doha's Education City, in which Hillary Clinton took questions from an audience of mainly students and an Al-Jazeera moderator. The event started at 10 am and ended in an hour. After the event, many of us mingled for a bit to share our impressions. In about 20 minutes I was back in my office on the third floor of the same building. At my desk, I checked my email and then surfed to the New York Times, and, behold, it had a front page article about the town hall event I had just attended. The Associated Press around the same time shot around the world its wire story about Hillary in Education City. Their leads were similar, as if the journalists knew what the latest talking point would be. In fact, it was apparent that much of the article was written before the event even began.

Really, we should stop "marveling" about the speed of news and its publication. By the time you're done explaining your astonishment, something "new" happens. Even talking about the pace of "new" is passe. About 12 hours after the news spread that Hillary mentioned that Iran is heading toward a military dictatorship, the Iranians came back with a statement that rebuked the allegation. And the band played on ...