Pages

Monday, February 12, 2007

The Untold (and Unexciting ) Stories We Never Hear

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing."
Oscar Wilde

Anyone who has cable TV has seen it - the 24 hour news station. Pick your brand - vanilla, chocolate, strawberry - but all of them have one thing in common - a ratings race.

So they show news that people want to see. I know this is true, because when Anna Nicole Smith died, all of the news about the Iraq war, the nuclear arms negotiations with North Korea, and the situation with Iran disappeared except for short bits at the top of the hour. Instead we were regaled with pictures of the star, her son, her baby, and the baby's first, second or possibly third fathers. People were interviewed - her past agents, her mother, her sister, possible fathers, possible fathers' lawyers and even a woman outside of the hotel where the body was taken from. (Her fifteen minutes of fame.)

If you still doubt that this happens, the same thing occurred when a NASA astronaut went off compass the week before. All of the other news was pushed aside in favor of that story, sensationalized beyond any sane person's ability to withstand.

And, yet, these situations are tragic. A young baby is left motherless and a woman is dead at 39, her only other child, a son, dead at 20 years of age. A highly educated, committed woman who served our country and sacrificed a great deal has allegedly broken the law, and ruined her career and reputation.

Based on ratings, our insatiable curiosity as a nation will apparently never be satisfied, no matter how much coverage we see of events such as these. Next week there will be another sensational story. The faces will change, but the reality will remain the same: The stories that are not being told are more often the ones worth knowing.

No comments: