Space Bandit wrote:
I think there's a good deal of truth in that. There needs to be a balance though... not just from the perspective of what we think should be in the main stream press reports more often, but from their point of view of how many papers they sell or how many hits certain stories get. I reckon most people reading average daily papers wouldn't understand the LIBOR scandal; and the fraudulent military industrial war games are a pretty complex affair to discuss in brevity - and of course the ties between the press and the scandalous institutions would create some conflict of their own vested interests. People will tend to gravitate to stories that they can easily empathise with - such as child murders or kidnappings especially when it's on their doorstep - because they're obviously fearful it could happen to them. & that makes it easier therefore for the press to push the correct fear buttons to make the populace demand more security & governance while at the same time raking it in from the stories ratings. Maybe a happy coincidence on their part rather than a conspiracy?
I think you're right, and I have also suggested to people that x story is trivial, while y story is significant, and they totally (almost aggressively) disagreed with me! I tried to explain to them that x story doesn't affect them in the slightest, whereas y story does, but it was to no avail.
I think there is an intrinsic interest among the public in human interest stories, and to some extent this is part of our nature as human-beings - this is why we like movies, literature, etc. - but that it is also exploited. To what extent it is exploited for commercial purposes, to what extent stories are deliberately released to bury certain news, and to what extent it serves a genuine salacious interest in Madeleine McCann and such like, that would be hard to say precisely.
