Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenTeaFrapp
In the 500 channel universe if people didn't want to watch the story, they'd have plenty of other things to watch instead. The fact that this thread is as big as it is demonstrates that this story caught people's attention.
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But that's what I'm saying... It caught people's attention because there was no way it couldn't catch people's attention. It was everywhere. There may be 500 channels but how many of them at some point yesterday would have addressed this story? A huge number, I'd guess.
We follow these stories in order to be plugged in to what's happening in the world, and what I'm getting at is that the 24 hour news cycle has tremendous power to shape what we think of as news. They've certainly replaced newspapers in that regard, the dwindling number of which still exist, precisely because they don't have to deal with same kind of time/space constraints of a newspaper. CNN can cover a story like this as it happens, rendering the newspaper article that comes out tomorrow, literally, old news. And I'm not arguing there isn't a demand for these types of stories, only that the demand is a byproduct of the very 24 hour news cycle that satisfies it.
I think you pointed out above another really interesting aspect of it... That there really is no dividing line anymore between what is 'news' and what is 'entertainment', but CNN and the major news outlets still try to legitimize their stories and themselves as 'newsworthy' in the eyes of the public - a good chunk of which believe it to be so (not everyone, of course, but a substantial percentage).