The term news cycle suggests that news turns in a circle, implying the same events pop up over and over again.  In fact, what the news covers is linear; it's only cyclical in that some events tend to repeat: natural disasters, wars, scandals, sensational trials, the sometimes jarring interface between police departments and citizens.
     Cable news is cyclical in that it's on air twenty-fours a day.  This says nothing of its value, since much of what the three big names do in occupying air space and time is worthless to the inquiring mind.  MSNBC spends numerous hours Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, not covering the news, but presenting prison documentaries and "caught on camera" shows.  They spend valuable time showing
America before the lens: prisoners, car crashes, construction workers hanging desperately from malfunctioning cranes, convenience store robberies; in short, SpikeTV under the banner of a news network priding itself as a serious alternative to CNN and Fox News Channel.
     Other than the entertainment factor of such shitty shows, why does MSNBC waste its money on such crap?  I haven't done research on their prison programming ratings.  Maybe they get a lot of mileage out of them while their weekday staff can take a break?  I don't begrudge their stars getting the weekend off, but surely MSNBC could afford to cover the news thoroughly from Friday at 9:00 Central Time to early Monday morning.  They have news and talk programs Saturday and Sunday mornings and early afternoons, but why get lazy? 
     This is the admission of someone who has watched more than enough MSNBC in the last decade.  Maybe I'm hurt.  Maybe I feel like I've wasted countless hours and minutes of my life trying to find nuggets of useful information in a channel more left wing than right wing.  Because this news network is on television, like sitcoms, dance and singing competitions, and such films as Sharktopus, watching it is something to do during idle minutes.  Food for my mind's image bank, perhaps.  This morning, MSNBC showed footage from Kathmandu of a four month old baby getting taken from the rubble after the powerful earthquake in Nepal.  I felt good seeing that.  I thought, The kid is young enough that he won't remember anything about being trapped under a building for days. 
     I also saw lots of helicopter-viewpoint footage of Baltimore: people in the streets, armored cops looking like black beetles, past footage woven in of buildings on fire, audio commentary by network employees in New York sitting in comfortable chairs, not being racially profiled.
     Watching cable news can provide a variety of emotions, including boredom and exasperation.  MSNBC abounds in erectile dysfunction ads.  It's really sickening how much money is spent on TV ads to make men's cocks feel reassured.  Erectile dysfunction used to be called impotence.  I guess that was too harsh a word, like the phrase, Can't get it up.
     I've focused on MSNBC here, although I could write a great deal about CNN and especially Fox.
Suffice it to say that all three networks, each representing corporations, engage in rhetoric, propaganda, political bias, and sometimes in pure stupidity, like speculation in a vacuum of real knowledge, a frequent activity by journalists, anchors, and pundits on all three networks.  Such speculation is less what professionals do and more what tavern customers do after the third drink. 
    
                                                                          Vic Neptune