What Fresh Hell Is This

I heard two different versions of a news story the other day. Both were aired by major American broadcasters. One of them bugged me.

“British Prime Minister David Cameron has called an emergency cabinet meeting…”

“There was a bizarre incident on the streets of London today…”

Both went on to tell similar versions of the facts: a British soldier had been hacked to death outside a London base; the two suspects had urged passersby to video the incident. Police arrived and shot and wounded the suspects. Not your average day in the British capital, to be sure.

Back to those lead sentences:

The first one is terrible, an F.

Aside from its bias for “official” news (more on that in the future) it’s just dull. Prime ministers call cabinet meetings all the time (and most of those times, the meetings are of zero interest to an American audience). The first time I hear this shocking story, and the most important detail you give me is a cabinet meeting? (Actually, not a meeting, but the SCHEDULING of a meeting.)

Dull is bad on aesthetic grounds, but more importantly because it undercuts the reporting, by putting the audience to sleep. This same news organization is fond of leads such as “a House subcommittee released a report today,” or “the Supreme Court has handed down a ruling.”

Here’s a ruling: if the first sentence would work on more than one story, you need a new sentence.