(no subject)

[deckardcanine]

The top Comcast headline when I checked just now was, of course, the latest Haitian death toll projection. The second headline was that one of the dead quake victims was American.

Does it seem to you guys that journalists have a cynical view of our priorities?

Comments

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

More sadly, I think the journalists have a fairly accurate view of American priorities, or at least what Americans are most interested in. If no Americans die in a tragedy, most Americans don't care.

[thatcatgirl.livejournal.com]

I have a cynical view of theirs, too.

Who is this average American, anyway?

[thatcatgirl.livejournal.com]

I think it may be a mistake to expect the average American to be as stupid/ignorant/selfish as those who would find the media to be, er, on their level. For a long time I thought that the lowness that the media panders to must be normal, else it wouldn't work. I've revised it to the media being pretty removed from everyone else.

Re: Who is this average American, anyway?

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

Remember that about half the pool is below average. I suspect that the media typically aim lower to maximize the audience.

[octan.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking today that it might help awareness of things like this if some celebrity(s) volunteered to go personally do relief work. Then I realized the risk was too much; if anything happened to them, the media would completely forget about the disaster and focus entirely on that instead.

[thatcatgirl.livejournal.com]

Maybe some celebrity just talking about it (preferably relating what it was like sometime when they were in Haiti) would do the trick.