Honesty is not the best policy (long version)

A soldier dies and no one notices. Some dude from Glee overdoses and everyone loses their minds...

That was the Facebook post that inspired this:

The news business is a business. They report stories that sell advertising time to pay for air time. The bottom line of business is always the bottom line. Period. It's why businesses exist.

But consider this...

1) When a huge multi passenger plane crashes the national news reports it. You might hear the name of the pilot(s) but you don't generally hear the names of the victims unless they were well known or could be sensationalized.

That's how they sell it.

2) When a small plane with pilot and passenger crashes the local news covers it, maybe, but almost always hear the names of the victims and the pilots.

That's how they sell this.

3) When John Denver crashed his plane he crossed both 1 & 2. Everybody covered it because of the name.

It sold itself and so this type of news is where the real money is at.

As one of my friends said," "News" is no longer an impartial discovery and reporting of facts rather a revenue generating opinion forming machine..."

True enough but my real point was this: They're all newsworthy.

I'm just saying tragedy on a large scale doesn't afford individualized coverage because it's simply not cost effective to the news business to report it in that way.

Consider the overwhelming volume of tragedy we invite into our homes everyday via "the news" that we're supposed to care about. A whole world of tragedy in our little families and homes.

It's no wonder we've become desensitized and complacent. A life time isn't nearly enough to treat each tragedy with the consideration they deserve, and each lifetime has it's own share of tragedy to consider as well.

I also can't imagine what it's doing to/ for our kids, but that's a whole different subject. Perhaps for another blog post.

So we have to ask the question : Does the news actually reflect what people seem care about or do people actuality reflect what the news seems to care about?

Maybe both are the case, but whatever the case is there is a far larger issue underneath all of it, in fact there are many. Too many to address here.

So I'll simply say here what I tell my kids: Just because it's true doesn't mean you have to say it.

Perhaps we should consider discretion, more than honesty as the best policy.

Just my two cents.