Is it news or noise?

There's more information available than ever before, but how much is true and accurate?

HOW IRONIC IT IS THAT AT A TIME THE AMERICAN people are saturated with information--mainstream television news, round-the-clock cable broadcasts, the old reliable every-hour-on-the-quarter-hour radio, and now the Internet--so little of what is spewed is useful, much less helpful. The information superhighway is indeed a fact, but who really needs it?

In direct contradiction to that American article of faith that competition causes the cream to rise to the top, more and more of what the public gets is from the "let's get it first or exclusively, whether it's true or even accurate."

The sad-but-comical spectacle of major media stars Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings fleeing their coverage of the historic meeting of Pope John Paul II and Fidel Castro in Havana last year to "cover" the Clinton-Lewinsky story that had just broken is a perfect example. The mighty millionaire anchors would have stood trembling on their corporate bosses' carpets if they hadn't made that flight.

More recently, Steven Brill, editor of the valuable Brill's Content, has exposed what he called "War Gets the Monica Treatment." "When the media machine turns from a sex scandal to life-and-death issues in the Balkans," he wrote, "the result--including bogus scoops from the New York Times and Washington Post--isn't pretty." Remember when the good, gray Times boasted "all the news that's fit to print" and the Post won well-deserved praise for its dogged expose of the Watergate scandal? Today can those two once-respected news sources claim scruples more admirable than those of The National Enquirer, The Star, or other supermarket checkout counter tabloids?

In painstaking detail Brill tells how the Times and Post put out a distorted story about NATO bombing in Serbia, a distortion that resulted from careless sourcing in an effort to "get the story." The damage done by these inaccurate stories was multiplied when Tim Russert of NBC's Meet the Press and Sam Donaldson of ABC broadcast them without questioning their accuracy.

Brill deplored "the changing dynamics of our new media culture [that] have affected even the way we deal with war and peace. The Monica Lewinsky scandal put all the dynamics of that culture on display."

To wit: "The speed of today's never-pausing news cycle that demands instant reaction from the players. The way 24-hour cable news channels love to fill the air with two screaming sides for every argument, as if the two sides are always equal and as if there is always credible disagreement about whatever the issue at hand happens to be."

So what of the bewildered viewer, listener, or reader of such seriously (sometimes terminally) unreliable reporting? What are we to make of the garbled, often self-serving stuff that bombards us around the clock?

What is the public to make of the claim of a partisan politician that his tax bill is intended to let taxpayers keep more of their money, when no one in his presence intervenes to point out that such a claim is merely a campaign slogan that more than likely is meaningless?

Who stands up, other than a politician, on the other side of the political spectrum to point out that it costs money--lots of it--to pay for smaller school classrooms, to put more cops on the beat, to enforce laws that guarantee cleaner water and cleaner air? Why must problems so vital to life and the general good of the community be political footballs to be tossed to and fro in our media?

Wouldn't it be possible to find such persons--an ombudsman or ombudswoman--to help us sort out the admittedly complicated problems that matter so much? Who would appoint and pay such persons? If government funds were used, could the necessary high degree of impartiality be attained? The justices of our high courts have a pretty good record when it comes to impartiality, and they tackle controversial questions.

Or perhaps a publicly funded agency might be possible, supported by a modest contribution from each person's income-tax payment, the agency supervised by a watchdog group of reasonably impartial people.

The ultimate responsibility, however, for sorting out and making informed judgments about public policies, including legislation, is our own.

Tough, but our own nevertheless. It would help, of course, if we could build up our scam detectors not just against phony sweepstakes but against slippery politicians as well as soft-shoe dancing advertisers.