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"By the time I can take people out to where Hubble is looking, they won't be human anymore, by a long way."
- Larry Niven

News Clown  
  A person who delivers specially selected light news.  

This is not a device, so it does not, strictly speaking, belong here. However, I'm adding it anyway.

An hour before his morning program on channel six, ranking news clown Jim Briskin sat in his private office with his production staff, conferring on the report of an unknown possibly hostile flotilla detected at eight hundred astronomical units from the sun. It was big news, of course. But how should it be presented to his several-billion viewers scattered over three planets and seven moons?

Peggy Jones, his secretary, lit a cigarette and said. "Don't alarm them, Jim-Jam. Do it folksy-style...

"Folksy-style," Jim Briskin said glumly. "I grin and say, Hey look comrades - it's happened at last, the thing we all feared, ha ha..."

"Is there any lighter piece of news?" Peggy asked. "By which you could open your program? The sponsor would like that... See what you can do. Mutant cow obtains voting franchise in court case in Alabama... you know."

Technovelgy from Stand-By, by Philip K. Dick.
Published by Galaxy in 1963
Additional resources -

Just in case you thought that the trend toward news as entertainment was a recent idea.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Stand-By
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip K. Dick
  Tech news articles related to Stand-By
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick

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