And now, back to Natalee somewhere in Aruba

Stranger at Blah3 gives us a thoughtful post on our dysfunctional "cabloid" programs -- "Interchangable parts. It's all the same to the media." Please, read the entire post. Here's the central point:

But at the heart of it, it doesn't matter what stories they're covering. It makes no difference whatsoever. A [shark] bitten ankle in Florida carries exactly the same weight as subway bombings in London, which carries exactly the same weight as an abused kid in Idaho or a missing white woman in Aruba.

The media in this country elevate local stories to national, even international prominence with saturation coverage. And the result is that when something truly important happens, like the London attacks, it ends up carrying no more weight than a shark bite in Florida.

Just how did this all begin? I think it's safe to assume that cable news companies are as focused on the bottom line as any other for-profit company in the world. There is absolutely no element of public service to take into account here. It all comes down to money.

Are the ratings really significantly higher when the cabloids (love that term) saturate the programming with Chandra, Terri, Jennifer, Shasta, and Natalee? Or are the ratings pretty much the same but the point-and-babble coverage of Chandra, Terri, Jennifer, Shasta, and Natalee is simply much cheaper to produce than coverage of complex stories of national and international significance?

If the ratings are consistently higher during saturation coverage of the current imperiled-white-woman-child, then what does this say about our citizenry? That they cannot or will not address the larger issues that one day will profoundly impact their lives? That they'd rather invest their time and emotion in single-person stories because the narrative is so simple to follow?

And what does it say about the cable news media if the ratings are pretty much the same whether the cabloids focus on damsels in distress or countries in turmoil but they choose to obsess about missing, abused, near-dead, and presumed dead white females because, hey, it's cheap and it's easy?

To me, it says that point-and-babble coverage is the default mode. That's what we're going to get day in and day out until a huge, occasionally catastrophic, un-ignorable event occurs and interrupts the pointers and the babblers. But not for long. Never for long. After all, they're still looking for the dead in London and we're already back to Natalee somewhere in Aruba, and we have been for hours.