I counted. One week. Every “breaking” alert. 100 clicks. 97 were lies. I am still alive. I didn't need any of them.
“Breaking news in india today in english” is everywhere. Every app. Every website. Every notification.
The word “BREAKING” is red. Bold. Urgent. It makes your heart skip.
I decided to track it for one week. Every time I saw “breaking”, I clicked. I noted what it was.
This is what I found.
The 97 that were not breaking
Here's what “breaking” meant that week:
A politician said something (not breaking – he says things every day)
A celebrity tweeted (not breaking – I don't care)
A stock moved 2% (not breaking – it moves every minute)
A cricket match result (not breaking – it was scheduled)
A weather forecast (not breaking – it changes every hour)
A crime in a distant city (not breaking – doesn't affect me)
A traffic jam update (not breaking – jams are normal)
A product launch announcement (not breaking – it's an ad)
A viral video (not breaking – it's entertainment)
A festival date (not breaking – it's the same every year)
And so on. 97 times.
Each time, I felt a spike of stress. Each time, I clicked. Each time, I was disappointed.
The 3 that were actually breaking
In that same week, 3 things were truly breaking:
A cyclone warning for a specific district (I don't live there, but it was real)
A train derailment with injuries (sad, but I wasn't on that train)
A sudden change in fuel prices (affected me, but I heard it from a friend first)
That's it. 3 out of 100.
97% of “breaking news” was not breaking. It was just noise.
What a news editor told me
I have a friend who works at a news website. I asked him: “Why do you call everything breaking?”
He laughed nervously. “Because if we don't, no one clicks. The algorithm rewards ‘breaking’. The reader expects ‘breaking’. If we write ‘regular news’, we get no traffic.”
“So you lie?”
“We stretch. The politician's statement is not breaking. But we call it breaking because otherwise the reader will go to another site that does.”
“Do you feel bad?”
“Every day. But I have a family to feed.”
The cost of 97 fake breaking news
Let's calculate.