Fear

One of the most ridiculous quotes I heard while watching Bowling for Columbine was that even though the murder rate has decreased by 20%, coverage of murders on news had gone up by 600%. This was astonishing to me and I think is one of the reasons many believe that the media instills fear into the public. Every night when the news comes on I hear about at least one gun shot victim and usually more. If you watch or read the news from other countries, it's clear that their priorities for what's newsworthy are very different from our own. I can't decide if the media really does do this to scare us or if it's because it's the only thing that grasps our attention to even start watching the news in the first place. Let's be honest, people crave scandal and sensationalism and by covering multiple murder cases, that's what the news is giving up. So who's to blame: the gatekeepers of the media or us?