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Michael Jackson Still Dominating The News

Posted by JACK GRANT, Assistant Editor in Media, Society.
Jul 10th, 2009 | Comments

Even today, well after the memorial service and weeks after his death, Michael Jackson is still dominating the news.

Why do I say this? Look at this screenshot of Newsmap:

2009-07-10-newsmap-small.jpg

This site is a news aggregator and displays headlines of topics sized according to the number of current articles on that topic. Normally for my configuration, the red blocks, which are world news, and the gold blocks, which are national news, cover more than half the screen, the blue, which is entertainment news, covers what you now see the purple covering, which is health news. The fact that there are two huge blocks both of which involve Michael Jackson show the dominance of this “story”.

Where is our sense of proportion? There is something very wrong here, which I will comment on more later.

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Cross-posted between Random Fate and The Moderate Voice.

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  • D. E.Rodriguez
    You ask, "where is the sense of proportion?" which is a very good question.

    Perhaps, as a journalist, you can give us your opinion as to whether this sense of "misproportion" is a result of what the public is interested in, or what the media thinks the public should be interested in.

    Thanks

    Dorian,
  • D. E.Rodriguez
    Just went to Newsmap.

    What a fantastic tool!

    I clicked on several foreign countries and was amazed at the differences of what seems to be important from country to country. Try it

    Thanks for bringing this up

    Dorian
  • D. E.Rodriguez
    Thanks for the feedback, Jack
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