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The No. 1 job of the media is to provide information to people about events that affect them.
The thing is, there are thousands of events that happen every day that would be considered newsworthy. It is the job of the journalist to pick which stories to tell in a limited amount of space and time.
So who chooses what story is going to be the top story?
Often it is determined by what those in charge think people will be most interested in, because the business of reporting the news is a business after all.
When something big happens — like possible war with Iraq or a space shuttle blowing up — the coverage goes off the hook. We hear countless stories from all sorts of different perspectives, all about the same thing.
But where is the line drawn? How much information about a topic is too much information? This question is one that is rarely addressed, yet is important to consider.
How many times have you turned on CNN or another news channel only to hear what seems to be the same news story over and over again? How many times have you wished to hear something else?
A growing tend among news outlets seems to have taken the phrase “comprehensive coverage” to levels of comprehensiveness never seen before.
The loss of the space shuttle Columbia is a classic example. The event has turned into a media bonanza, with stories ranging from a play-by-play event log to the detailing of the personal lives of each member of the shuttle’s crew.
Make no mistake — the loss of seven astronauts is indeed a very tragic thing worthy of news coverage. It should be discussed in detail. But should it comprise half of the coverage of every newspaper and news program for the next month?
Nearly every single newspaper in the country featured the same headline on Sunday: “The Columbia is Lost.” They also all had the same picture. And maybe that was a good thing — people needed to know what happened.
The Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times dedicated 15 pages in the main section of the newspaper to the tragedy, and left less than half that number for news happening elsewhere in the world.
On Monday, virtually every paper in the nation had screaming headlines about the Columbia again. Only the New York Times led with coverage of Iraq as well as the shuttle explosion, according to a search of the day’s front pages on the Newseum Web site.
There was a startling lack of information about impending war or Bush’s proposed $2.2 trillion budget on the front pages.
The Los Angeles Times dedicated eight more pages of its front section to the disaster in its Monday edition.
CNN has had 24-hour coverage since the event happened at 6 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday, pausing briefly every now and then to discuss other news like a possible global war.
How long is this going to continue?
The media should not allow itself to fall victim to the lure of covering huge events so much that they seem to forget everything else that is going on in the world. News outlets must fight the urge to stand still in the face of tragedy and tackle the things that people should know about.
Today’s society is so complex that people are constantly faced with a barrage of important issues that they must remain informed on.
This is the information age, after all.
Submitted February 06, 2003
MALIBU, CA
