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© Copyright 1997, Jim Loy
A few years ago, near Kalispell, Montana, a school bus stopped to let children out. Seeing the flashing lights, the driver of an approaching semi tried to stop, and slid on the icy road, failing to stop. The children who had gotten off the bus, jumped into a snow drift, to avoid the sliding semi. And the school bus driver backed up, avoiding the collision. The story never made the front page, thank God.
Don't you wish that things like this would appear on the front page? I'm not actually complaining that this was not on the front page. I hate to admit it, but I really do want to read about all of the violent crimes and disasters. The news media coverage is biased in favor of these things, not because the reporters don't do their job right, but because you and I (the public) demand it. The reporters are doing their job right. If they filled up the front page with stories like the above one, we would probably buy a different, more interesting, newspaper.
The news media seem to be saying that there is more and more violence and disasters. This may be true, there may be more violence and disasters. But, don't look to the news media for evidence of it. The news media are necessarily biased. The fact that they are reporting more violence is partly due to better reporting (due to high tech communications). We hear of disasters and crimes in the third world, that we wouldn't ever hear about thirty years ago. And when the local television reporter goes to the scene of a burning house, and sends his report to his TV station, across town, by satellite, we are in a new era.