Morbid Curiosity Keeps Media Printing Trash

As I read CNN’s top story headlines every day, I get depressed without even having to read the articles. It would seem that anything to do with dying, killing, maiming, cruelty to animals, cruelty to children, torture, war, dismemberment, poverty, rape, crime, religious hate, racial hate, political slander, riots or suffering in any other form is up front and in bold print. 

Many so-called news items are not national news. If a school bus runs over a child in a small town somewhere, it is tragic, but it is not national news. It is not bad enough that the news outlets focus almost entirely on misery and the lowest tendencies of our society, but they leave these items on their sites for days.

Most of these headlines do not serve any purpose. If an article is talking about an outbreak of flesh-eating bacteria in Bangladesh, is it something we need to know with our morning coffee? An outbreak of some kind in America, if contagious, is newsworthy, as we need to be aware and protect ourselves.

One of the problems in international news is that it can bring the worst to our breakfast table, from countries all over the world which have a lower standard of living and value on life. Because of this, we are peppered with horrors from the Mexican border, and the Middle East.

Shootings and carnage in our own cities are great headlines. People who shoot their families and themselves make for wonderful journalistic fodder.

As a nation, we are sinking to new lows almost daily. Our standards of conduct, morality, understanding, education, justice and overall quality of life have been scraping bottom for too long. We complain that the press is full of bad news, but we keep reading it. Why?

Reporters are not going to keep reporting on those items that hold no interest for people. If we cannot change some horrific situation, or prevent further suffering, there is no point in reading it. I maintain that readers of these items must cease to read the tabloid garbage that passes for news each day, to help our news outlets understand that this kind of news no longer sells products.

From week to week, reporters know what’s “hot” in the news. They also know what people want to read. Do we really need to see a closeup of the killer’s head injuries over our toast and tea? I think not. It’s old news being regurtitated and reworked. At some point, we need to refocus on something that is priority in our lives.

Distractions in the news keep us from focusing on those items that are much bigger and that affect everyone. Issues that affect our city, our country and our world that need addressing should be priority to news outlets, but it’s not. So, like mice with the Pied Piper, we follow the news tunes wherever they lead, reading things from the bottom of the trash heap and wasting our time.

This is a call for everyone to stow away their morbid curiosity and begin to send a message to the press about what is important to us.