Rebecca Blood said it, not me, but I agree 100%. News is news, whether it’s a human tragedy or something more like a Greek tragedy, complete with hubris, arrogance, and greed.
Reporters: Lost in the ‘Fog’?:
[I]n the Lake George stories, details, background and context were as natural as using a headline and a lead paragraph, yet the breaking Frist story was written as if the events occurred in ghostly isolation, disconnected from others like them, from society, and from humanity in general.
One story, Lake George, has a certain neutrality about it. It’s real news (it’s not political scandal). So reporters and editors fearlessly get it all for us. They do not just report the events, they pull all the relevant facts (laws, history, similar events, speculations, social impact) out of the thousands of bits of information floating around– out of the fog.
The other story is also news. In terms of what will or will not happen to us in the future, it is significantly more important. All the bits and pieces that I’ve tossed in here can be found, without too much effort. Yet, they’re not there. They’re still lost in the fog.
If I said that that it is because it involves a very powerful man backed by a very powerful political party with lots of supporters who attack the press when they feel their leaders are attacked, most reporters and editors would say no, they would never make a decision to report based on fear or favor. Yet virtually everyone handled the story the same way.
Just as reporting all the details about the Lake George incident seems natural, it seems just as natural that the intersection between Frist’s money and politics, the other insider trading in the administration, the corrupt and criminal practices that are the basis of Frist’s fortune went unremarked. Under-reporting in such circumstances has become institutionalized. That’s why the fog remains.
We — democracy — deserve better than this.