Celebrated racehorse Barbaro was euthanized January 29th, after a series of surgeries failed to provide him with a mobile and pain-free life. Within eight hours, nearly two thousand accounts of his death flooded Google News.
This placed Barbaro's coverage at nearly four times the reach of the news that world scientists are meeting in Paris to pool research on global warming, and also four times the reach of the account of escalating tensions between the US and Iran over accusations of nuclear proliferation, six times the reach of the news that the World Criminal Court is about to hear their first case, ten times the reach of the story of the Bush Administration's continuing failure to deliver promised aid to New Orleans, and about the same reach as news that Hamas and Fatah have reached a cease fire in the Palestinian Authority.
Media reach is a term borrowed from marketing, where it refers to the potential audience for an ad. A story can reach -- or fail to reach -- masses of people whose world views may be influenced by exposure to that idea. Popular fluff can bury vitally important news.
Barbaro's fight for a good life after a disabling sports injury captured the imagination of millions of people across the world. The story is sentimental, perhaps archtypical in character, romantic in the traditional sense of the tragic and heroic.
How can we persuade people that the drama unfolding over climate change, or over the uneasy reconciliation in the Palestinian Authority, is similarly engaging, heroic, romantic, and exciting -- and more relevant to our childrens' futures?
Until more people find such news appealing, it won't sell ads.
And since selling ads is what most of our media is about, it is only those stories with significant "media reach" which will be pushed to front and center -- archaically "top of the fold" -- for our consideration.
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Shava Nerad, News and Opinion Correspondent:
Shava’s column, Iconoclasm, published several times a week to Gather Essentials: Newsis an examination of the provocative ideas emerging in media and world culture behind the news.
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Comments: 4
Good article....Thanks
In what appears to be a colossal goof impugning the credibility of Parade Magazine and its widely read Personality Parade, the writer of the column, Walter Scott, said of Barbaro in today's issue (Feb. 11): "...he developed a condition in his left hind hoof requiring surgery on Jan. 13. Since then, his comfort has improved, an he's stable."
An alternate concern here is that, if that was a true reading of his condition prior to his death, does that suggest that he may have been put down - at least in part - for the insurance proceeds????