Lora Prill at ADCO shared with me this pretty hilarious deconstruction of a CNN news story. Here’s the story, headlined “”Credible threat’ from al Qaeda in Yemen,” and here’s the deconstruction, or at least a taste of it:

…I mean the headline was “credible threat” or something, right?  I mean, what is actually being reported in this article?

“The U.S. has some information about time frame, this source continued, saying, “It is more definitive than it usually is.””

I believe that’s the fourth anonymous source using all those vague, unhelpful pronouns.  So, the officials have this on lockdown, or what?

“The U.S. does not have information on location, however…”

Okay.  That’s fine, but, again, what the [expletive] are we talking about?  Aviation still, right?  CNN, are you reporting on measures that have been taken to address this “credible threat”?  Is that what’s going on here?

“This source pointed out that aviation security is rigid already and that no additional protective measures have been taken.”

Hmmmmm.

“But, the source says, “there is a lot of stuff going on in the next day or two” relating to analysis.”

Now what in god’s name does that mean?  A lot of “stuff going on” “relating to analysis”?  I defy anybody to find any trace of information contained in those words.  Seriously, CNN?  “Stuff going on”?  You couldn’t get anything better for an off-the-record quote than there’s ”stuff going on”?  Are there also times in our intelligence community when there isn’t “stuff going on”?  CIA agents just come in to work, stare at a blank wall for 8 hours and call it a day?

Actually, come to think of it, what’s hilarious is the original CNN piece. The mockery isn’t all that imaginative, and it has the distracting element of being written from the paranoid “MSM are shills for the military and the gummint” point of view. The spoofer says “if they published it in seriousness you’d think they existed purely as a propagandist arm of the government.” No, they wouldn’t. Propaganda is more artful than this. And more directed. If this is propaganda, what on Earth is its aim? Laughter? Confusion?

No, what we’re dealing with is gross incompetence, the basic inability to write one’s way out of a wet declarative sentence. And unfortunately, this is something we see too much of in what’s left of the harried, overworked MSM.

One is tempted to dismiss it by saying that the moral of the moral of the story is, don’t ask broadcast folks to write anything. Or to say that this is what you get when a committee tries to write something. This committee, specifically, consisted of Ed Henry, Dan Lothian, Jeanne Meserve and Pam Benson, all of whom are attributed. It’s amazing that even one person was willing to put his or her name on this abomination, much less five. (Which means there are perhaps as many putative authors of this piece as there are anonymous sources, depending on how you count.) Maybe they’re pseudonyms. Maybe those are actually names of people the true writer doesn’t like. Really, REALLY doesn’t like.

But here’s the real explanation: This is typical of what you see and hear on 24/7 TV “news” all the time; it’s just not as noticeable when you don’t see it written out. Basically, the author(s) had some scraps of information, although not enough to put together a coherent picture of anything — but went ahead and blathered aimlessly about it. I understand why this happens on 24/7 TV, because it’s about killing time. What’s really distressing is that too often these days, I have the same “huh?” experience after I read news stories in print.

The whole country’s becoming incoherent. Maybe it’s Twitter. Maybe it’s blogs. I don’t know, but it’s distressing. I mean, OMG and so forth…