The Corporate Journalism Chicken/Egg Question

The nation.. The world itself is in a horrible place.. getting worse by the day..

And we blame politicians, financiers, Investors for it..

And we even blame the media for its lack of coverage on anything truly important or vital to the lives of everyday people..

But really, as much as its their fault, its also our fault because a perfectly rational argument could be made that the media simply gives us what we want.

And what is it that we want?

We want happiness.. Distractions.. Detachment..

We want complicated concepts expressed to us as if we were 4yrs old and as briefly as possible; 140 characters or less preferably since that's Twitter's limit

And we don't wish to know of any problem that can not be solved quickly by our leaders; we have enough on our plates with work, taking kids to soccer practice, and picking up the dry cleaning...

So in a way its our fault more than it is the media why we as a society are so utterly uninformed of what really matters

We did an experiment..  We went on Google News-- keyworded "Obama" and other terms or phrases  to see how many news stories were written, posted & duplicated on the World Wide Web in the past couple weeks.  The goal of this being to establish a comparable of what stories the global corporate news felt worthy to cover:

Obama + Gay Marriage --  About 1,450,000 results

Obama + Greece -- About 672,000 results

Obama + Afghanistan -- About 358,000 results

Obama + Iraq --  About 65,800 results

~ We don't care where you stand on gay marriage, pro or con.. its a social issue.  It arouses passions and convictions.. it is akin to flag burning or marijuana for medicinal purposes...  When the markets crash and the global economy goes with it, gay marriage will not be the catalyst

Obama + basketball -- About 759,000 results

Obama + unemployment   About 78,800 results

Obama + high unemployment --  About 6,120 results

~ Guess media doesn't believe unemployment is high.. then again they're employed
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Obama + economy + better --  About 13,400,000 results

Obama + economy + worse -- About 30,100 results

~ An absolute joke
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Obama + fundraiser -- About 60,500 results

Obama + Federal Reserve -- About 42,000 results

Obama + Bernanke -- About 11,600 results

~ Its more fun or interesting to read about George Clooney's $40k/plate fundraiser dinner or the one upcoming at the home of Sarah Jessica Parker.  Besides, who cares about the stuffy, stodgy Fed anyways.. they don't matter, right?
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Obama + Justin Bieber (teen singer) -- About 56,300 results

Obama + Kim Kardashian (professional whore) -- About 51,500 results

Obama + Hillary Clinton (Secretary of State) -- About 48,900 results

Obama + Tim Geithner (Treasury Secretary) -- About 12,900 results

Obama + Leon Panetta (Defense Secretary) -- About 11,500 results

Obama + George Osborne (Britain's PM) -- About 6,960 results

Obama + Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel's PM) -- About 6,870 results

~ The President taking time out of his busy schedule to greet Khloe Kardashian

Remember, these are the number of stories written by mainstream corporate news entities.  We can only surmise that its far easier to write stories on Obama and Kardashian from the comfort of home then serious news stories involving world leaders.

So its really chicken/egg...

Which came first-- terrible journalism or public disinterest in news?

You make the call...

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