A few days ago while watching the evening news I kept hearing the news anchor teasing me that two airplanes had collided and that the details would be forthcoming at some later point during the newscast. After three teases and three breaks, the news finally did come up, but it wasn’t newsworthy at all. It seems that a parked Southwest Airlines plane backed up to leave the gate and clipped another parked airliner with the tip of its wing. Somehow that fender bender had become worthy of national news coverage. The report illustrates the fact that network news has a ...