I'm watching a little of the news coverage of the arrest of Brian Nichols, the Atlanta courtroom shooting suspect. It's another one of those situations, so familiar in the age of 24/7 reporting, where everything the reporters know could be summarized in about three minutes…but they have to keep stretching and repeating and wringing variations out of the information. I'm surprised no cable news channel has tried selling itself the way a lot of all-news radio stations promise to give you the whole world in 20 or 22 minutes. There are times you don't want in-depth coverage. You want the three-minute version.
I am amused by the occasional appearances of the words "alleged" and "suspect." Everyone is unhesitatingly discussing how Nichols grabbed a gun and shot this person or that person. Every ten or twenty mentions of his brutal crimes, someone — usually a law enforcement official — feels they're being responsible to toss in an "allegedly." On CNN, and I guess this is some sort of style guide thing, they also keep referring to him as "Mr. Nichols." Glad to see they're protecting the man's dignity and, every once in a while, the pretense that there is any presumption of innocence anywhere.