I do hate to be a wet blanket. We do have a sense of humor at the Missourinet. But we don’t use it to play jokes on our listeners.

I was listening to NPR yesterday morning as my wife and I got ready to go perform in our church’s Easter cantata when I heard a story about the recently discovered Beethoven Tenth Symphony.  At the end of the story the announcer alluded to this being April Fool’s Day, apparently indicating the story was an April Fool’s joke.

Later in the afternoon I heard the NPR afternoon crew run a story about a New York City prep school that is requiring parents of unborn children to submit to DNA tests that will determine whether their child will be successful enough to enter the pre-school in another four or five years.  And again, at the end, the announcer indicated that this was April Fool’s Day, apparently — again — indicating the story was a joke.

Some people in Washington or wherever wasted ten minutes of my time and probably a few hours of theirs with this stuff. And they weren’t the only ones.

We don’t do that kind of stuff at the Missourinet.  While news is not always serious, it is never a joke. Some folks might think some of the people who make the news might be jokes (Former Missourian Will Rogers once noted: “Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”), but reporting what they do is a serious responsibility.

We sometimes report enough real stuff that is hard to believe.  We don’t need to cook up anything.