Dave, the gateway for “real” news, has a beef about the kidnapping coverage:
All the cable news networks are covering tonight are the two boys who were kidnapped in Missouri. Meanwhile, 70 people died today in one bombing incident in Baghdad. Barak Obama declared for President. The Scooter Libby trial started in Washington. Bush was interviewed on PBS.
Those 70 folks will still be dead tomorrow. Obama will still be declared for president tomorrow. The Libby trial will still be going on tomorrow. Those two kids? They might be alive today, but that could change by tomorrow.
Now, I certainly grant that cute white kids from upper-middle class neighborhoods get more coverage than poor minorities, and that’s not good, but let’s get real: most of the country does not care about any of the things Dave mentioned to anywhere as much as they care about things that hit close to home: kidnapped kids, and the media is a market. They give us what we want.
First, keep up the good work on the blog. I love the rebuttal to Winer.
I used to read him and enjoy it. At first I didn’t notice all the ego. Now I do. Then I somehow accidentally discovered your blog, and love it. I track your blog and Winer’s side by side in Bloglines. I track his mostly to skim it and see what he’s complaining about now. Then I read yours to see the rebuttal. I wish you did more.
But on to this post – just to make one thing clear, the kidnapping he is talking about didn’t just occur. The kids got away from the kidnapper. One had been kidnapped for around 4 years, the other just a few days. That’s the news story. To follow your flow, tomorrow they will still be free.
Hmm, was not aware of that (I generally don’t follow what the MSM is telling me to do, I lost faith in their inpartiality a long time ago), and that certainly changes the argument that this is more news-worthy than those others… now they’re all equally newsworthy.
More on this in a coming post.
As the first commenter noted, the boys were found. Also, they were not “cute white kids from upper-middle class neighborhoods”, though your definition of cute might deviate from mine.
They were both from rural parts of Missouri between 40-60 miles outside of St. Louis. The families were definitely not upper middle class. The parents of Shawn quit their jobs four years ago to dedicate their lives to finding him and other kids. In fact, the mother recently went back to work so they wouldn’t lose their home.
Anyway, thought you should know.