Admittedly the coronavirus pandemic is big news, but many nights the local and national news have no stories but. Does this mean that all that news before the pandemic, which certainly has not stopped, was not really of “breaking” urgency? Politics, international relations, disasters, crime, achievements, good deeds, heroism, financials, etc. – nothing is worth mentioning anymore?
There are several possibilities. One, all those prior events were so uneventful that the newscasters had to pump them up by preceding their stories with “Breaking News”. Essentially no news was worth watching the news for, proven by the current silence on everything but the pandemic. Two, news reporting is so mercenary that they will simply push the hottest story and ignore all else. Essentially, news stations have become a filter for what we learn. Third, the pandemic news simply must overshadow all else. That’s hard to believe that nothing else is important.
Let’s go with number two – the filtering theory. It is likely to be the case because it is aligned with getting news from social media and with people’s short attention span. People don’t want to be told everything to then sort out for themselves what is important; they want it sorted for them. But who should do the sorting? The danger of the former, social media-type newscasting, is another form of sorting called affirmative news – going to a similar-minded source so that what you hear is what you want to hear. At present most media news tries somewhat to be even-handed, Fox News notwithstanding, but it still filters plenty. To really understand the world takes hard work that few are willing or able to endure. Make no mistake, the rest of us are being manipulated.