Your News Media at Work [ by Michael T] [Eye on the Media]
June 30, 2009What was on the cable networks last week? Apparently just three stories were really deemed important. Care to guess what they were?
If you guessed Iran, Mark Sanford and Michael Jackson, you hit the nail on the head. A set of stats from Pew Research Center sheds light on what our media obsesses over and the results are pretty disappointing. Stories are deemed big not out of public necessity but because they push Americans’ buttons. Ooh a dead celebrity! Ooh evil Iranians! It also shows the tendency of outlets like CNN to go wall to wall in their coverage of things to the detriment of less sexy topics.
In the meantime, the big losers were healthcare and the economic situation - a combined 16% of all news coverage was devoted to these life or death issues. Thanks a lot news media.
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