CNN has a big red banner atop their site
BREAKING NEWS: Senior U.S. officials say intelligence “chatter” suggests terrorists may be planning a major attack inside the United States. Details to come.
Now, what possible good could such an announcement bring? No news value–there is no information beyond the fact that terrorists would like to hit the US, which we knew–and of course nothing we can do about it as readers.
Update: It occurs to me that the above post is framed as a criticism of CNN for running with the story. While I do think it’s being overplayed, my major objection is to the government for constantly waving the red flag on these issues. Given that we’ve been in at least Condition Yellow since the alert system was created, I find all government warnings about attacks that are not quite specific worse than useless.
