I certainly agree with Safire’s quote. Safire is commenting on the expansion of the time and space allocated to the coverage of news, and the corresponding expansion of things that are included in the news. Safire is pointing out that the more people know, the more they want to know. However, in our current society, people want to know about all the wrong things: celebrity scandals, fashion trends, et cetera.
I believe Safire’s quote can be expanded: “Things expand to fill the time and space allocated to them.” The ‘things’ that I refer to are the non-necessities in daily life. People always say that “there just aren’t enough hours in the day,” but hours to do what, exactly? We as a society are always trying to maximize the time we have; whether it’s with drugs like caffeine or taurine that make our bodies run faster, or with technologies that do our work for us.
This being said, I certainly do not agree with the second quote. Waugh’s first assertion, that “news is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read,” is contrary to reality. My problem is with the word want. People who care about an issue, whether it be something as silly as fantasy football, or something as serious as developments in cancer research, will definitely be the most eager to seek out information and news on a topic. His second sentence is based on the assumption that his first sentence is true, and therefore both sentences are wrong; if a person who cares about an issue acquires news on it, contrary to the news being alive and dying, the person can make it come alive. A person who is inclined to seek out a piece of news will be the most active in promoting his opinion regarding that piece of news, and therefore the news will be given more meaning than it had before that person read it.