Following Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan's latest post - "Big Media versus Americans" - decries Big Media's burying of the Nick Berg story under the Abu Graib scandal, even though "Americans" are far more interested in Berg. Clearly, this is the result of leftist bias, and mainstream journalisms' attempt to smother the collective war-spirit. The following is an e-mail I just sent Sullivan.
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Dear Andrew,
Instapundit judges internet (and by extension, "American") interest in the Nick Berg story by the huge number of google searches for "Nick Berg Video" or "Beheading Video" or something like that. Tell me, Andrew: do you honestly think the lion's share of those searches are in the service of interests that are genuinely political/intellectual, or could they represent something a tad more base in our society (from my experience of giddy co-workers gingerly exchanging run-downs of the gore, like it was a new Terminator flick, I'd guess the latter). And this brings us to the larger point: should media coverage be dictated (or even influenced) by the appetites of consumers, and if so, are you really prepared for the front page of The Washington Post dominated by "Paris Hilton Sex Tape" and "Michael Jackson Face Lift" headlines?
Here is Instapundit's "data".
Instapundit:
Right now the 10 phrases most searched for are:
nick berg video
nick berg
berg beheading
beheading video
nick berg beheading video
nick berg beheading
berg video
berg beheading video
"nick berg"
video nick berg
Likewise, Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News reports that that's what his readers care about:
Our letters page today is filled with nothing but Berg-related letters, most of them demanding that the DMN show more photos of the Berg execution.
Its not that people want to talk about Nick Berg, what it means for the war, what it means for our country. Its just that people want to see the pictures. Are pictures in themselves news, and are the consumer interests they serve in themselves worthy of satisfactions?
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Andrew hasn't answered me yet.
Any takers?