the media herd

Is our understanding of the frightening and shocking bloodbath at Virginia Tech amplified by the presence of every “name” reporter and anchor and talking head in the business?

Apparently so. Here are the headlines (oldest first) from TVNewser yesterday:

Va. Tech Shooting: Greta En Route

Va. Tech Shooting: Couric To Blacksburg

Va. Tech Shooting: Hour-Long Nightline Tonight; Cuomo, Roberts On Scene Tomorrow

Va. Tech Shooting: Williams En Route; Dateline Schedules Special At 10pm

Va. Tech Shooting: Lauer, Vieira, Barber Going To The Scene

Va. Tech Shooting: Harry Smith To VA

Va. Tech Shooting: CNN Suspends King’s Anniversary Programming For Now

Va. Tech Shooting: 10pm Special On MSNBC

Va. Tech Shooting: Greta Live From 10pm to Midnight; Geraldo Live From 12 to 2am

Va. Tech Shooting: Williams & Couric Interview Victims For Evening Newscasts

And just to show you where the American media’s priorities are:

Anderson Cooper is returning from Afghanistan — special live AC360 programs from there have been cancelled…

Last week, Alessandra Stanley, in reviewing the PBS series America at the Crossroads in the NYT, wrote [e.a.]:

The title alone suggests the series’s ambition: “Crossroads” is an attempt to look at the post-9/11 world as broadly and deeply as possible. It’s a worthy and worthwhile examination of the clash between Islam and the West, but it’s also the kind of sorrowful, all-knowing look backward that makes viewers wonder why all these journalists, experts, scholars and former government officials were not more outspoken about the impending crisis before it blew up the twin towers and drove the Bush administration to invade Iraq.

The next time some huge geopolitical horror happens and people start wondering why nobody “connected the dots,” you will know why: because the American media serves the American audience with full-time wall-to-wall “news” coverage of sensational incidents, to the exclusion of “news” coverage of almost everything else.

It’s not the news. It is a weird form of therapy: wallowing in the horrific details.

And when the media doesn’t have events as horrifying and senseless and tragic as the bloodbath at Virginia Tech, it creates dramatic news. Or dramatizes that which is inherently not dramatic.

Because infotainment rules.