Where Is China?

What if there was a terrible catastrophe that hit upon our shores? Perhaps a twister that runs through Oklahoma wrecking incredible havoc. Or an earthquake along the California coast that causes billions of damage and an incredible amount of death. Maybe floods hit a low lying city leaving it stranded without power, food, and a civil administration to keep law and order. If any of these scenarios were to take place would the cable news channels be able to bring the full scope of the horror to the rest of the nation? Would they?

Of course they would and they already have many times. Within hours of a major natural disaster, the big three of FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC would be up with their famous word titles (i.e. "Flaming California", "Slow Death in Louisiana", "Twisted Tennessee") and haunting music. Any and all other potential and on going news stories would be put on hold. For days on end we would have wall to wall coverage of the human misery.

And yet now, when a disaster of Herculean proportions hits the world's most populated nation of China, the event is seen as an annoying sidebar for the cable journalists. Little time has been spent over the past five days chronicling the scope of the Chinese earthquake. Somewhere between twenty to fifty thousand will perish in the 7.9 shocker. But for those glued to our number one source of news, little relevant information is reaching the audience. (In fairness, it has been FOX News of all channels, that has shown a bit more than CNN and MSNBC.)

But we should not be surprised by all of this. The cable news business has become cable magazine. Reporting budgets have been pared and executives have become completely preoccupied with the bottom line as portrayed in advertising ratings. The moguls have decided that a disaster involving Asian folks in a far off country just does not make for compelling viewing. Far better to spend endless hours on the late and perhaps meaningless West Virginia Primary on Tuesday night than on the growing Chinese crisis. Why spend money sending a host of reporters and cameramen halfway across the world when more viewers want to watch the continuing soap opera family squabble known as the Democratic nomination process. Why waste all that money when you can bring in a whole pack of talking heads into studio and inanely analyze the vote in a preordained Clinton victory.

It is alarming what is going on with our media. By paying attention to viewer preferences, we are receiving narrowcasts instead of broadcasts. The problems, conflicts, and situations in the U.S. and the world no longer control what we are going to see in our news. Instead, cable bigwigs are deciding what we will view, ingest, ponder, and know about. A small fire in Florida has gotten much more time on cable than has the earthquake. Obviously, the election is trumping everything else. With today's controversial California Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, expect much more debate on this issue in the coming days. So where does that leave the folks still trapped and isolated in China? Lost, forgotten, and most likely stripped of much needed public attention that can be translated into real help by the American people in donations to the Red Cross and other humanitarian causes. News as entertainment: fun but deadly!