Thursday, February 02, 2006

Selective Coverage

Since the Steelers won the AFC Championship game, the Pittsburgh news channels have been covering every story that has anything even remotely having to do with anything Steelers. A toy cannon that shoots black and gold confetti? Sure, we'll do a special report on that. A two-year-old child named Seven after Ben Roethlisberger? Yeah, that sounds like a top story, alright.
It's great that the Steelers won, but what happened to the real news? Wendy Bell totally neglected to tell me about the two mining accidents yesterday that raised WV's death toll to 16 miners in the past month, and during any other week, that would probably be the first thing I heard when I turned on the TV.
It's just kind of interesting to see the media's ability to 1. sort of pick and choose what people are informed about and 2. make any piece of information into a headline just by putting the right spin on it. That will probably ease my worry a little bit the next time I hear about a terrorist threat or the bird flu plague.

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