Who says what's news?

by dsantore

It seems like only yesterday that O.J. Simpson’s murder trial whipped up the country into a frenzy over crime, celebrities, race, and justice.  In the years since, we’ve had several chances (aided by mass media, of course) to revisit these themes: American football star Michael Vick and his dog-fighting ring, Michael Jackson’s bedroom, and several other high-profile instances come to mind.  This past week brings us a new case, involving New York Giants football player Plaxico Burress.  Tabloid newspapers such as the New York Daily News have turned the story of Burress’s allegedly illegal handgun possession (and accidental self-shooting) into a major feature, and New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg has gone out of his way to publicly comment on, and thus influence, the police investigation,  Close readers of the Daily News’s sports section and contributing bloggers are presently embroiled in a debate: to what extent should the sports section of this newspaper be covering this crime, and, on a related note, what is to be made of a mayor’s very public intervention into an ongoing investigation just at its outset?  And, when we consider that Katie Couric last night concluded the national nightly news with a feature on the Burress saga, do we not wonder about the general mission of mainstream media news?      

Read more about the story in the NY Daily News

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