"An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted." - Arthur Miller

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Only one thing happened today

Once again, if going by Fox and CNN, you would assume that only one event occured in the entire world, in this case the tragedy of murder of a young girl in Florida. Its sad and horrible that happened, and hopefully the person responsible will be given the death penalty.

However, this story continues to illustrate the media's desire to make everything an "EVENT!!!" for ratings. Even a year ago, this wouldn't be national news to be discussed all day long. It would be a top story of day at the local and state level and maybe a quickly 10 second mention on Headline News. It should tell you something when local news doesn't break in to discuss it but CNN and Fox go on all day long about it. In the fight for new supremecy, one news service decides this is the event of the day and so in fear the others tag along.

Now I am not saying it shouldn't be on the main news networks, but it shouldn't be the only story of the day or really the main story. It may sound callous, but children are murdered everyday. Making this the event of the day only illustrates just how damn picky the media is on discussing these topics. After all, why not mention all the other children killed in the country or the rest of the world. Why only this florida girl? If, god forbid, another child is murdered in say Wisconsin tomorrow, is that going to be the story of the day? I seriously doubt it, unless slow news day of course. If going to give this such airtime, shouldn't all other murders get the same coverage? Its just seems so arbitary, based on no logic or rules and basically just highlights to everyone why no one really takes the new media seriously anymore.

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