Breaking the News

"Well you see, it's like this ... " -- How to explain a soap opera

   You can't make this stuff up.
   News manipulators long ago learned that to bury a story, release it late on Friday, so it would be too late for Saturday editions and would be off the Front Page and distract editors from an even more negative story that the manipulators want buried.
   That was before 24-hour news operations on television. Now, while it may take a story off Saturday newspapers, the story can play all day on Saturday TV news operations, and it gives Sunday editors a full day to research and prepare in-depth stories for the Sunday edition.
   Moreover, internet news sites can splash the story immediately on Friday evening and provide updates and expanded versions all day Saturday.
   As for the attempt to push the story off Page One, that often fails also, as editors put both the scandal story, the coverup and the distraction on the Front Page.
  
   So it is this weekend, as the White House tries to break the news cycle with a flurry of maneuvers intended to control what is covered and how. It's enough to give some editors a headache trying to decide where to play the various stories emanating from Washington.
   Some editors. Most, however, wallow in the challenge and delight in the idea of so much hard news so quickly breaking.
   Examples: Friday at about 10 p.m., the government fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, two days before he was due to retire, The move would deprive McCabe of his pension after 21 years at the agency.
   Meanwhile, the president filed a lawsuit against actress-porn star Stormy Daniels, claiming $20 million in damages.
   Then the president's lawyer said the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller should halt the probe into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. At first, attorney John Dowd acknowledged that he was speaking for his client, Donald Trump, but soon backtracked to insist he was speaking only for himself.  But then that also changed to his first position that he spoke for his client.
   In all, the plot thickens faster than a 15-minute soap opera, leaving readers and TV watchers in need of a program to keep track of who's doing what to whom, where, when, why and how.
   That's an excellent example of the journalistic Five W's at work.
   What a fun time to be a journalist.