A guy shoots five people in the mall but all you want to hear about is Anna Nichole

Cows are very important to this country. Horses like Barbaro are a distant second, but there is hope since lost whippets in New York ae moving up. PETA rules.

 

teenagers in trenchcoats going on shooting rampages is like.....so.....yesterday. Come up with something original (you kind of like.....have to imagine my valley girl voice when I say that).

 

Agreed. The priorities of this country are really screwed up. This past week there was also a shooting in Philadelphia where an investor in a company went to a company meeting and killed three employees yet you barely hear anything about that.

 

At this point Anna Nicole's baby may as well be RoseMary's Baby
cause it is bring out all the Devils

"When you trust your television
What you get is what you got
‘Cuz’ when they own the information ooohhh,
They can bend it all they want " - John Mayer

Rocket River

 

I don't see anything wrong here.

We are a capitalistic society. Therefore people will tend to pay for media outlets that give them "happiness". To provide such "happiness", the media outlets have to make news entertaining.

Or do you prefer to red Mao's little red book every day?

 

Those aren't the only two options.

And people getting shot up in malls isn't much bigger news than the dead, famous, fat chick. At most, it should get about 5 minutes of news - it's dramatic, but after the fact it's of little practical importance to the majority of us.

Ideally, the news would be focused on things like: Gov. Rick Perry accepting a bribe from Merck pharmaceuticals to make one of their products MANDATORY in the state of Texas.

The media during the 1920s (muckraking journalism) functioned, for better or worse, as a sort of oversight committee. We need that today.

 

But then the media outlets are profit making businesses. They will just put out things we want to pay to read/watch (or they think we would like to read/watch). It is not possible to be a mainstream media outlet and not to fall to the lowest common demoninator.

If you want to read something more serious, you can always subscribe to political journals, e.g. Foreign Affairs. Not sure if there is anything in between Foreign Affairs and Time magazine. If there are none, that means it is not economically possible to have such a publication.

That's how our system works. If you don't like it, you can put your $$$ to create such a publication.

 

i think it is interesting how the media reports this piece of news... they could have gone one way with the Islamic background of the shooter, but instead they took the Columbine approach by mentioning he was wearing a trenchcoat..

what does what a killer wear these days matter to a story?

 

I agree its not the media outlets fault but the consumers.

 

I was just in a restaurant for lunch that had a TV with "Headline News" on and the sound down, and every 5 minutes there was a picture of Anna Nicole Smith.

Word to the world: The beeyotch is deader than Julius Caesar. Let it go!!!

 

While waiting for the Rockets game to start last night, I was switching around the dial. It was about 7pm, while the pregame crap was still on.

On the Paula Zahn show, they were talking about it. On the Bill O'Reilly show, they were talking about it. It was exactly 7, which means that both shows opened up with this "story" ahead of everything else going on in the world.

Pathetic.

And, you know....it's the same thing with the Tim Hardaway "story".

Ultimately, does it really matter what a basketball player thinks of gay people or where a fat drug addict is going to be buried? With everything else going on in the world???

 

Yeah, but it keeps Jr out of the news. So you know he's lovin' it!

 

I think many Americans are like my mom. She was glued to the TV for the OJ trial, the Peterson trial, the girl in Aruba story, etc. She even watched some of the Anna Nicole Smith stuff. When the State of the Union, or a story about the war, or news about presidential candidates comes on, she couldn't be less interested. I think that is the typical consumer of mass media in America, which is why the Scott Peterson story dominated the cable news airwaves for a year, despite it being about the death of only 2 people (3 if you count Scott's eventual execution).

 

Evidently in her will it's ambiguous because it was done before the birth of her daughter. It basically said not to give said inheritance to future children or spouses...oh...five people in the mall...all you want to hear...wrong thread, sorry guys, I didn't realize there were other issues in the world.

 

News *should* give the people what they NEED more than what they WANT.
then again . . so should Government

Amazing that she gets more pub than Mother Theresa did
and Mother Theresa was a Saint

Rocket River

 

But exactly who is to say what the people "NEED?"

 

*That's* the problem

Defining NEED

Rocket River