Maybe I’m just an unfeeling asshole…..but can someone explain to me how a house fire that kills 7 college students in South Carolina is National news…. much less news that merits national coverage on it’s third day?
The Meme-Mandated, Semi-Regularly-Updated, Occasionally Coherent Thoughts of G.M. Skarka
My guess
What with the fires in California no longer being leading news, somebody in charge of programming wanted to stick with fire as a leading story.
No, I hear you. I don’t understand it, either, with the Bush-nutcases threatening to invade Iran, Blackwater killers getting away with murder, and actual news happening all around us, this gets coverage day after day? It’s like Paris Hilton all over again.
Re: My guess
Ah, now that might explain it.
Comparisons
It does seem odd in the wake of the Calif. fires that a single house fire would be a big deal.
Re: Comparisons
Ah yes, but you see:
South Carolina = Real Americans
Southern California = Liberal Traitors
There’s a teensy-weensy part of me that fears this might actually be the driving idea here. How awful that it’s gotten so bad that I can’t entirely dismiss that thought.
Re: Comparisons
This is the first I’ve heard of it out here in CA, so I don’t think it’s as bad as some past media frenzy stories. I usually stick to the San Jose Mercury, SF Chronicle, NY Times, and BBC (all online). Now that you mention it, I found it headlining in the National section for the Mercury. I was surprised to find that CNN and Fox News currently don’t have them as a headline, as when you mention something that’s ridiculously being treated as national news. Although, CNN does have something related to it in it’s Latest News list, surprisingly I don’t see anything on Fox and instead find them talking about Blackwater. What national news are you watching/reading?
Re: Comparisons
When I posted, it was the spotlight lead story on the CNN site (they’ve now moved it to “Latest News”), and on the MSNBC site. I don’t touch FOX. Ever.
I get most of my news from the BBC, and from various newsblogs (Andrew Sullivan, for example).
My guess is, and understand I am a paranoid about things like this, it is an attempt to deflect your attention away from something else that they are not reporting, but know they should be.
Re: Comparisons
Ah, okay, I figured it might have moved.
I only touch Fox to see how widespread crap like this is. Or, if my blood pressure is getting too low.
I wonder if the problem of frontpages is the same as 24 hour news networks, they keep cycling the headlines to keep “viewers” coming back, so you end up with a lot of pointless crap – except when truly important stories hit, like Paris Hilton losing custody over her dogs.
My opinion
we actually listened to the 9-1-1 calls for this event (they were posted on the website for a local station out there) at work today, and given what the callers were saying I’d go with that it was a local story that had a few key points that got it blown up enough to get picked up nationally.
Those points being:
– people were trapped inside and subsequently died
– Someone jumped from the building after it was engulfed and survived
– the fire was actually pretty huge. So huge in fact that callers were reporting a fully involved building from boats out on the ocean and from a bridge many miles away.
I’m not saying it deserved national attention necessarily…but those types of factors are the kinds of things that ping the media folks to accelerate something.
only by…
the same priority system that made the I-35 bridge collapse a 2 week CNN event. Pictures sell, &, sadly, the human mind has an easier time grasping the fiery death of 7 people more easily than the “routine” deaths of hundreds due to famine, flood, & war.