 The song is about the callousness of TV news reporting as well as the tabloidization of all news.Henley sings from the standpoint of a news anchorman who "could have been an actor, but I wound up here", and thus is not a real journalist.The song's theme is that TV news coverage focuses too much on negative and sensationalist news; in particular, deaths, disasters, and scandals, with little regard to the consequences or for what is important ("We all know that crap is king").