The difference between US and International News

While trying to find a news story that caught my attention to write about here, I stumbled across what seemed to me to be a trend. I had a feeling that the Imus issue would be discussed already so I checked out the world news section. What caught my attention was the themes of all the top stories in both the World and US sections. The U.S. section seems to always have stories varying in subject matter, but the World news appeared to have one common thread, death.

Practically every story in the world news section had a byline with the words killed, death or slain in them. At first I didn't think anything of it due to the ongoing war and violence plaguing the region, but then I thought about it some more. There must be other things going on in the world outside of the United States other than death. Is this the influence of the media? Do Americans really only want to know about how many people were killed during a suicide bomb? Or are we just not told of other things for various reasons?

I think the answers to these questions is yes to an extent. I believe that the media as an entity picks up on what people want to hear about and covers said stories. The media alone does not have the power to say what it will and will not cover. They cover anything from war, weather and women. I feel that if the American public showed an interest in what the newest scientific findings were in China, the media would cover them. However, I think that maybe the government plays a role in what is shown. The current president wants us all to be for the war in Iraq, and therefore I feel that he may be indirectly supporting the stories of murders and bombings in an attempt to gain support for his cause.

There is death and murder in the United States every day as well, but it is not the only thing we hear about. The every day occurrences abroad are just as important as those on the home front. If we want to be aware of what is going on in the world, the media should do a better job at covering occurrences other than death and murder.