Page 8 - January 2020 IIssue new year
P. 8
The Spectrum of Death: Perspective on News Coverage
volving trees, strikes us sion shuts down the entire by with little reporting.
with charm and grandeur, expressway, or a winter
and as such can become a snowstorm threatens deep But if a scandal emerges,
photo or video feature in snow, heavy drifts and reporting often follows.
the media. high winds -- the coverage Scandal rivets us, with its
expands, both to prepare confluence of deceit and
On the tragic side, the us and to report the im- privilege and special in-
poignancy runs darker pact.
-- incidents of appalling
injustice, or terrifying vul- We can now, at a broad
nerability, or mystifying level, comprehend the
origin. Terrorism rivets us differing level of cover-
on all these dimensions. age across the spectrum
We cringe at unfairness of tragedies and death. We
heaped upon the innocent can do so since, at a broad
victims and the barbaric level, we see a subtle, or
psyche of the slayer; we maybe not so subtle, dis-
find ourselves feeling tinction in media news
no place lies outside the coverage. That coverage
reach of such acts; and we focuses not just on events
can not relate or under- within certain categories.
stand how or why a person Rather, in a good measure,
could justify their killing news reporting picks out
actions. events, across any and all Photo Courtesy of google.com
categories, with the high fluence. That poignancy
News also seeks to pre- profile characteristics de- triggers news attention.
pare us, and to inform tailed above. Thus, the media details
us, of events with ma- and exposes the private
jor impacts. We receive Consider politics and plane junkets of a Con-
daily weather and traffic government. Much about gressional representative,
reports, in tight snippets these items, say the innu- or the expensive luxury
when conditions run about merable pages of the Fed- upgrades of the office of
normal, but when the eral Register or the mul- a public administrator, or
traffic or weather hits the tiple and daily speeches in secret meetings of a cam-
extreme -- a truck explo- the halls of Congress, goes paign official with foreign
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