Here we go, the mental template for reporting uprisings, worth a line or two only when there are deaths.
Please don't minsunderstand me, it is a tragedy which is inconsolable for those directly affected, family and friends.
But it shouldn't take a newsroom editor a head count to decide: "Ok lets run with that story now".
It's this bizarre notion of news management that we've consumed as the norm, which in turn gets passed down a generation. I hope not, at least not in my lecturers.
Underlining this indexing, is that old chesutnut: if it bleeds it leads.
There's been so much attention attached to this, and Burma is no exception, but I'm sure a poll would reveal, that in comparison, there's been little said why there are riots; what the Burmese seek, or the fact that this event was a slow crash materialising.
So what does news do? Well it waits, and a bit more, then some... and then here's the copy that moves Burma up the news. Frankly it didn't need that.
We're far off from the paradigm shift within the psychology of news that moves it away from predictive formats and reaction to that which seeks to inform before hand - which may or may not yield pressure to thwart such calamities.
I'm just a simpleton. What do I know, But where would we be with blogs and the networked concerned reportage generation.
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