Why America's media sucks

Media herding is something that always piqued my interest. During the Clinton administration, church burning suddenly became a big issue. It seemed like the news was reporting a new incident every other week. They held Congressional hearings. Important men fulminated about the rampant problem of racism. Then you look at the data, and the number of church burnings had been decreasing monotonically for as long as data was available. In fact, it was at an all-time low that year. The only thing that changed was the media coverage. A few years ago, the big media story was shark attacks; lots of scary articles warning about shark attacks. Yet again, looking at the data, the numbers were tiny -- less than the chance of getting struck by lightening -- and again, there were fewer attacks than in previous years. A year ago, it was kidnappings of young white girls, though once again, the number of kidnappings has also been declining. Court cases are particularly amusing. Why is Scott Peterson so prominent, when there are lots of murders each year that people ignore? [more]