Bombarded with news

It used to be possible to get a painless news update by watching CNN's Headline News for five minutes on the hour or half-hour. Now it taxes the brain, eyes and ears to figure out what's going on. The newscast appears on 40 percent or less of the screen. To its left is a slide show of slogans, logos, titles, maps, photos and text.

Below is a headline banner that includes the time, and a secondary story headline and text. Under that, sports scores and stock statistics flash ever-changing data, while off to one side, temperatures jump out from maps. In addition, there's often a "crawl," a horizontally scrolling strip of copy along the bottom.

This dizzying assault on the senses is like reading a couple of newspapers, listening to the radio and watching two TV shows at once. Even if you ignore weather, stocks and sports, you are still bombarded with multiple snippets of info in addition to a primary story being told by a newscaster.

We have an insatiable appetite for information, but shoving all this at us at once obliterates the clarity and adds to the confusion.

Charlotte Phillips

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