Headlines, snapshots.

NEWS is a funny business. Events that grab big headlines one day--with the promise of being really big deals--have a way of petering out weeks and months down the line. And stuff that no one had even thought about suddenly has a way of exploding in our faces.

It wasn't long ago that the White House went on about Iraq having those dastardly weapons of mass destruction, with the media, by and large, credulously chronicling those claims. No such weapons were found, of course, and President Bush and his minions have been forced to improvise on the justification for going into Iraq. Oops. Meanwhile, those same journalists who too often took the word of the administration in the months leading up to the invasion are suddenly the skeptical observers they should have been in the first place.

Our willingness to accept so much at face value is paradoxical for a society that has become so cynical about so much. But short of researching every last nugget of news you read about, what else is there to do?

When the Secretary of Homeland Security warns Americans that al Qaeda is planning some big attack in the United States this summer or fall, common sense would suggest that the guy has received credible information leading to that conclusion. What we often forget is that his previous warnings proved to be off the mark and that, in truth, any terrorist attack will likely occur out of nowhere.

Part of the problem is that the news business gets its information from experts whose job it is to tell us what will happen in the future. Their instinct may be to demurely conclude that "time will tell," but reporters are not about to accept such modesty. So the experts spit out predictions that they themselves might not really believe.

For more than a year now, some regional economists have insisted that L.A.'s housing boom was about to slow down--that the monthly price jumps of 20 percent or more could not go on forever, especially with higher interest rates in the offing. So last week comes word that in June the median price of a house in Los Angeles County reached a record-breaking $414,000. Oops.

In trumpeting the news, a headline in the Los Angeles Times asks: "But will the run-up last?" Logic tells us the answer is no. Sooner or later, home prices are bound to fall. But despite our insistence on getting the particulars, there's no real way of knowing when that will happen and to what extent.

Among the most Unreliable chroniclers of the future are those following sports. Last winter, when Frank McCourt took over ownership of the Dodgers, no one would have dared predict that the team would be in first place at the All-Star break. What you did hear a lot about was McCourt's inexperience and financial inability to bankroll the team. Oops.

And need anyone be reminded that just six weeks ago, the Lakers were primed to rout the Pistons in the NBA Finals and win yet another championship--only to be humiliated on the court and dismantled this summer. With Phil Jackson and Shaquille O'Neal gone and Kobe Bryant's legal future up in the air, the current assumption is that the Lakers will be lucky to even make the first round of the playoffs. Perhaps. But don't be surprised if in six months the scribes are talking a different tune.

No matter how much we want to know about the future, news is but a snapshot. The real answer is still the most confounding: Time will tell.

Mark Lacter is editor of the Business Journal.