News (noticias)/ “chisme” (gossip)- where do you draw the line?

More and more, gossip pieces and other trivialities are taking over and usurping what we have traditionally known as “news”. Like the other day, I was laughing with some friends about a story- the way it was reported of course- from the Trinidad Express newspaper about a thief who broke into a grandmother´s house and stole her Christmas gift and even slippers. The story went on about how the shameless thief broke into this very old, poor lady´s house, lamenting at the state the country was in etc.. I mean, where do we draw the line here? Why can´t they simply report the story without giving us generous doses of their lamentations, moral comments and other paraphernalia? One friend smirkingly remarked that in “small island Trinidad”, that was what passed off as news- “chismes” and other anecdotes… of course it is unfair to judge the quality of a newspaper by this isolated story and that’s not the point anyway… just that more and more, we are becoming indifferent to diluted, poor, distorted and frivolous reporting…that what goes on, for example, in Victoria Beckham´s life takes precedence over say…some disaster or some more edifying news piece about art or culture etc… which brings me to what I wanted to write about. This is the headline that caught my eye and gave me a good laugh even though I didn’t read the entire story- La madre del niño obeso de Asturias murió de anorexia. Los abuelos reclaman la custodia y acusan al Gobierno del Principado de "rapto". It was all so surreal reading the little extract. That a kid, whose mother died of anorexia, was 10 years old and weighs 100 kilos!!!! Is this a record for extremes? Did the mother revert to starving herself with the daily mirror-confrontation of her obese kid?! The story only gets weirder. After her death, he was taken in to live with his grandparents, but he was removed by the government of Asturias in order to be put under a diet regime. Ok, now here’s the thing- the grandparents are crying kidnap! and “encima” they make a comment like this one- estaba gordín, pero sano como un coral. Hahah!! Who are these people kidding? Or maybe with age, their perceptions have become hyperbolically distorted?! So this is the kind of news pieces we are more and more being bombarded by…which we content ourselves with daily in a world that is more fantastic than real. No wonder García Marquez gets so much good raw material for his magical realism from the very reality which never ceases to amaze…