"excessive media attention"

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I've heard this phrase used about the Space Shuttle disaster. It strikes me as kind of interesting, and one that's become very popular (perhaps since 9/11, maybe before).

First of all to be pedantic the phrase itself is so ridiculously subjective. I've yet to hear it used in a non-comical sense, so far it's like "I agree with xxxxx, there really hasbeen excessive media attention" where neither party makes any effort to define the term or give examples. I also feel people often preempt excessive media attention after a tragic incident with "god I won't be able to bear all the wringing of hands etc etc".

Has 9/11 desensitised people? Have serious tragedies got too much media attention since 9/11? And obviously what do you consider excessive? There's something obviously dysfunctional about the phrase, what's a better way of putting it? I suppose this question even leads me to more basic journalistic ones I probably should know the answers to already like, in this case does the media reflect public opinion and thus is it insensitive to call the attention given "excessive".

Well?

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:05 (twenty-two years ago)

by non comical, I meant from my perspective, obviously.

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Media as cause of PO vs media as effect of PO? "excessive media coverage" only comes into play when the PO jars with the media and the two clash, ie; the former becoming disenchanted with the latter, generally at a point during the media coverage rather than before or afterwards. The quote only gets used by people who continue to engage with the coverage though, not those who avoid it (otherwise how'd they know it was excessve?), ie; "The first five hours of Diana's funeral were OK but the last five hours were just excessive. I watched it all though."

Interestingly, post 9/11 I've given up watching the news on television in favour of listening to it on the radio (which I always favoured anyway) a; because I lvoe the presentation/analysis/commentary/development you get on Five Live, and b; cos I don't ever want to have to have my intellectual awareness of the news accompanied by images like that ever again, whatever the news is. I'm not a squeamish (sic) peron at all, but I no longer see news visuals as necessary.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:15 (twenty-two years ago)

in the uk, the media totally upped the ante on themselves with the lady di coverage: given that their anti-royal line at that time was "the queen is being so cold: actual humans wd be on the streets tearing at their clothing", they reduce their own room for manoeuvre in re sensibly opting out (eg they have competitively to ratchet up one another's bids to be the most "thorough" and "caring")

(was it the independent that covered ther charles-di wedding with a single terse paragraph on page 2? anyway, a newspaper locked into sales wars DAREN'T do this nowadays...)

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:17 (twenty-two years ago)

its the nature of the shuttle crew's death (i.e. they died because a shuttle exploded and this is a very rare and unusual incident) and subsequent political sensitivity imposed on the disaster (i.e. another kick in the teeth for the U.S. government/people) that have resulted in a level of coverage that would be considered excessive given the number of deaths was limited to seven people, wouldnt you say?

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:19 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't know, I suppose I'm objecting to the way this phrase has become acceptable or is used a bit when it really doesn't work or mean anything. Nick is right when he says you have to consume the excessive stuff to then make the judgement.

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:21 (twenty-two years ago)

the thing about the Diana coverage was that that was quite an unprecedented incident - nobody really knew how to handle the situation because they had never been in that positiob before - it was totally out of the blue and as a result of that i think there was a bizarre range of reaction, emotion and treatment from the media and the public that may well never be encountered ever again in this country - not even if the Queen died suddenly perhaps.

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:22 (twenty-two years ago)

The space shuttle one is very interesting because Space Shuttle Crash 1 was a massive disaster for the US with regards to their view of their space programme, the civilian on board, lack of owt else going on in US news.

So with space shuttle disaster two the news media set about recreating space shuttle one, not wholly realising the law of diminishing returns when it comes to sequels. The news has changed (space shuttles are not infallible any more), we have changed (the space race is over and people are less interested), and the world has changed - we're about to go to war.

I'm not sure if the phrase is so necessarily subjective. You could quite easily analyse the amount of media attention gived to certain types of news and then estimate what the death of seven people in a plane crash (human interest/transport/minor disaster) + major setback in space travel (science/industry) + effect on nation (pop. psychology) would have.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:24 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm not sure if the coverage of the recent Shuttle disaster surpasses that of the Challenger disaster in terms of quantity (the quality issue is irrelevant perhaps) - but i think its that sensationalism that is provoking people into saying its excessive i.e. the press jumping on Abu Hamza's supposed comments about it being an act of God etc. - why bother to report that at all really?

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Challenger should have had more media attention, it was NEWs, a space shuttle had never done it before. its impact was much greater than this one, where the US Space Program is no longer an explicit metaphor for the greatness of the nation (though quite a good one for its stagnation and stability).

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:28 (twenty-two years ago)

i think Challenger got adequate media attention didnt it? i was only 8 when it happened but i did realise the significance of it and that mustve been down to copious coverage

one definition of excessive news coverage would perhaps be rolling news channels like BBC News 24 - when there is one major story and not much else going on these channels become unwatchable after more than 5 minutes because of their nature they are required to constantly focus on the story, but if the quota of new information cannot keep up with them then they just have to fill minutes of airtime re-iterating themselves relying on the old 'if you've just joined us' routine every 5 minutes

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Are the "what constitutes news" questions ever absolute at any given time though? I mean sure if you're talking about proximity but how much of it is about how well something is covered, I agree it's possible to say "this should be reported" to some degree but to say "this has been overdone" seems way way harder and does become subjective, I mean where do you stop

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:32 (twenty-two years ago)

At the risk of sounding totally self absorbed, I've been at the centre of excessive news coverage. My bofs story was newsworthy but the extent of news coverage he was given and the news coverage I was given I can say first hand - f*cking excessive. But then I'm biased

― Plinky (Plinky), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:38 (twenty-two years ago)

chortle bofs=boyfs

― Plinky (Plinky), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:41 (twenty-two years ago)

The what constitutes news thing is never absolute, but that doesn't mean to say that it is impossible to follow trends on this thing. The trend on what constitutes news would also suggest that the new space shuttle disaster would not merit the amount it has gotten, its almost as if it had been parachuted into the programme and gleefully jumped upon by nbews teams getting a bit bored with the warm up to war.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:43 (twenty-two years ago)

But wouldn't some events buck the trend by their nature? I always understood that trend part to mean less serious news, like in some cases isn't it ok to have something parachute into a programme?

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:48 (twenty-two years ago)

But there would be a trend for that kind of event. Problem is the trend for a space shuttle disaster is pretty much just the previous one - rather than thinking of it, as I do above, as a combination of more regular news stories.

Challenger also had much better visuals - rather than a pretty inconsequential vapour trail, we had a takeoff & trouble. From a news media so dominated by images this is also a step down.

Certain things buck the trend and obviously draw attention to themselves by doing so, and by the kind of media attention they get. From the moment the news is reported, the reporting comes a part of the story too.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 13:52 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,888308,00.html

― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 14:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Good piece. But I want graphs.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 14:21 (twenty-two years ago)

As a weird aside to the space shuttle crash of the weekend (I know I told a few people in the chatroom on Sunday night, but haven't thus far mentioned it in here), I was playing Trivial Pursuit with my mum on Sunday, and one of the questions was "What was the name of the shuttle which was destroyed in 1986?". Correctly, my mum answered 'Challenger', and admitted that she only knew because of the media coverage that day. However, when I turned over the card, the answer had been misprinted - they'd put 'Coumbia'. How fucking weird and scary is that? I was goign to throw the card away, but the literature question was about Winne The Pooh, so I reasoned it was spiritually redeemed.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 14:34 (twenty-two years ago)

'Columbia', obv.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 14:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I was in third grade when the Challenger blew up. I remember that our teacher had us all sit on the floor in front of the tv to watch the take-off. Right before she turned on the tv, the other teacher for our grade ran in the room crying uncontrolably saying that it had exploded and not to turn on the tv. It was a very frightening experiance for me because I had not had to deal with anything that traumatic before.

Back to the topic at hand, I def understand the gist of the article Archel linked. It bothers me that people die every day in tragic events and their lives go unnoticed, while others become American heros.

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 14:40 (twenty-two years ago)

There are a few on-purpose errors in Trivial Pursuit to flummox copywright abusers.

― suzy (suzy), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 14:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Why would it flummox copyright abusers? Surely it just pisses off punters and causes family arguments.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 15:04 (twenty-two years ago)

but i thought that was the whole point of trivial pursuit?

― gareth (gareth), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 15:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, obv.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 15:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Depending on how much you believe in the free market you could claim there's not really such a thing as "excessive media attention," only "you get what you pay for" (or, more accurately, "you get what someone thinks you're most likely to pay for in future"). I say this because media coverage of all events -- as has been way too evident since last September -- bends and shapes itself to perceived national moods: I don't think we'd have had quite the numb solemnity over the shuttle if it weren't already supposed by the media elite that the people of the U.S. are in a solemnly nationalistic worried-about-our-own-national-endeavors mood to begin with.

Of course solemnity is self-reinforcing: by expecting us to be solemn they make us solemn. Which is the whole problem with trying to peg "excessive" media attention: just like any talk show or sitcom or magazine, they're throwing out whatever they think people want to experience, and -- just like any reality show, actually -- the fact that they're throwing out one particular news event, or that other people are absorbing it, in itself makes the event newsworthy.

With the space shuttle I still think there was a massive case of Not Enough News to Satisfy People's interest: just a grainy shot of a streaking flare, debris reports, and nothing anyone could say apart from "geez, what an awful accident." This news takes, at most, 10 minutes to report -- but most people's perception of the significance of the event calls for extended breaking-news coverage. Was it "excessive" to go beyond the 10 minutes? In an informational sense, yes. In a market one ... maybe not as much?

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 17:00 (twenty-two years ago)

In other words, is news meant to be top-down mandated education, or a consumer-driven service?

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 17:02 (twenty-two years ago)

But certain reports can be excessive for the free market news environemnt too - ie when said news misunderstands the perceived national mood and gets it wrong as I think it has done here - at least with respect to the UK.

News is top-down mandated education dressed up as a consumer driven service (the tabloids) or a consumer driven service dressed up as top-down mandated education (the broadsheets).
Sorry - that's a bit glib.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 17:04 (twenty-two years ago)

it should be exchange of perspectives and views, but sadly we don't have the technology oh wait

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 17:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Speaking personally (and I'm sure loads of people feel the same way) I was fascinated by the latest Shuttle accident, not because of it being 'a blow to US pride' etc. etc. but because it was an extraordinary way to die - being suddenly incinerated miles above the earth's surface. That doesn't happen very often so naturally people find the debris and the helmet that was found fascinating. There's always that interest with air crashes as well...the fragility of human life in the face of such frightening forces. But with the shuttle even more so. That's the thread behind most of the coverage that I've seen and it seems entirely justifiable to me.

― David (David), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 17:21 (twenty-two years ago)

true, but the argument for that is if a train crashes and kills 30 people it should get more news coverage than a space shuttle blowing up and killing 7 people...i suppose because there are more human casualties involved so technically more lives are affected (relatives etc.) if nothing else. but perhaps the shuttle disaster has a greater magnitude because of the context its taken place in (as questions continue to be asked about the military build-up, and perhaps the questions about funding of the space program will be re-awakened amongst other things) - and yes trains crash a lot more often than space shuttles blow up so the latter becomes 'more newsworthy' in that aspect of being a significant event. there is no right or wrong way about it i guess, totally subjective

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Someting is not objective != totally subjective.
Its a continuum.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 18:11 (twenty-two years ago)

The problem is not so much that the media is excessively giving attention, but that they are excessively presenting that attention. 24 hour news stations have really buggered everything up. Everything is now reported live as it happens vs. after researching and documenting facts.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 18:12 (twenty-two years ago)

true, but the argument for that is if a train crashes and kills 30 people it should get more news coverage than a space shuttle blowing up and killing 7 people

If the train crashes and kills 800 that would be interesting because of the scale of death. But the manner of death is more mundane. I maintain that in this instance it's the way they died that fascinates so it's not really relevant that there were only 7 of them.

― David (David), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 19:37 (twenty-two years ago)

You can't just count deaths. More people die in road accidents every day. How many people die of ordinary diseases in your local hospital every day? A space shuttle crash has only happened once before, and in its detail it was like no accident ever, and few people have gone into space. Millions more people have an interest in any space shuttle mission than in any given train journey.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 21:08 (twenty-two years ago)

maybe so, but nobody is REALLY that interested in the space shuttle missions are they? I stopped realising shuttles were going into space every few months when I stopped watching Newsround with John Craven. that said, i think i agree with you AND David anyway

*insert quote from Simpsons 'Deep Space Homer' episode here*

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 21:31 (twenty-two years ago)

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