Sorry, but I just have to ask: Is it just me, or does it seem people care more about a person's death if it has wide media coverage?

I don’t tend to care about anyone’s death I don’t know. May seem harsh but it’s just me. I didn’t know the person and unless I respected whatever they were famous for I wouldn’t shed a tear. If Justin Bieber died I’d jump for joy!

If it’s not on the news, most people won’t even know it happened. They can’t care if they don’t know. But yes, a lot of people seem to think that being newsworthy is the same as being important.

I think when media coverage points out inconsistencies in either the accused’s actions or in the police activity, that ignites interest in the story. I don’t think it’s the coverage in and of itself that makes people interested.

That’s definitely not just you.

Certainly the “chattering classes” do. “My goodness Beryl, you’ll never guess who’s just gone & died!” That sorta thing.

No, I don’t think so.
More people know about a death that receives wide coverage, so more people are talking about it. Most people don’t have a tie to your non-famous neighbor or cousin or whatever, so they don’t have any reason to talk about their death publicly.

Well, if most of us lived in small towns, barely touched by the outside world, as we did 150 years ago, only the local folk, really big people who ran nations (or murdered people whose demises were especially heinous) would be the ones whose deaths we knew about. The rise of mass media gave rise to the mass-marketed death stories of every Sheila, Greg and Kim.

And it not like people gossip over the backyard fence or at the general store anymore, right?

Well..it’s not that you care more, it’s simply that you know about it now. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I hear of someone dying, I care.

One of my students (he’s 55) started looking through the paper I bring in every morning. He said, “There it is.”....It was his father’s obituary. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever read. It gave his name, his age and the names of his children. It ended with “There will be no services.” I cared about that. I cared about my student.

Oh absolutely. I wanted to puke today when Nancy Grace started saying “justice will never be served for little Caylee Anthony….whose corpse rotted in the woods….gnawed on by animals….”
Caylee’s death was sad in the same way that every toddler’s death is sad. It’s just that this one was wayyyyy overpublicized for some reason.

I don’t think we care more, it’s just that we are all aware aout it, so we can discuss it easily.

@aprilsimnel Are you serious…, Sheila, Greg and Kim died?

There is bound to be more discussion about a person’s death if it receives a wide media coverage. It doesn’t mean that anyone cares more about it than the loss of a loved one. Maybe this thought stems from the fact that we bring up the loss of celebrities on a fairly regular basis.

@rebbel, and Kim!

It’s easier to care about the death of one person than to think about the fact that twenty THOUSAND people starve to death every single day of the year.

I care about all the unnecessary deaths of innocents. People just talk more about the publicized ones…. because they’re publicized. I felt horrible about several deaths that occurred in my neighborhood, and I didn’t even know a few of the people. I bet none of you gave a shit that my neighbor died though, because you didn’t know her and no one called to tell you she died.

I agree with @Pied_Pfeffer. Talking about a highly publicized death doesn’t mean that we don’t care about everyone else who’s dying. It just means that it’s front and center on the news, and everyone hears about it.

Really. How could you hear about it and truly say “I don’t care.”?

@Dutchess_III Some people don’t care because they don’t know the person. There are those that prefer that life move on instead of having it stop just because a celebrity or loved one of someone else dies. Maybe they haven’t experienced a loss. Each of us deal with death in different ways.

What most have said I guess, if everyone hears about it, then it will be talked about. Whether or not you were/are a fan of that famous person. Reminds me of an Eminem song where he says that when some dude shoots up his school in a high class area, it seems to matter so much more than some ghetto shooting where everyone expects it to happen, anyway. They’re all human lives though.
I wonder how much coverage some homeless guy would get from jumping off the bridge, as opposed to a celebrity who does an overdose and caps their own head off.
We know about them, so I guess it’s back to square one. It also helps that a lot of famous people, especially celebrities, are heroes to some, inspiration to others… There’s something fucked up somewhere though. Like how social status is what seems to dictates a lot of shit, including matters of life and death, or at least, what’s worthy of mentioning.
Of course, you can’t fill the evening news with everyone’s deaths, because then it would never end and it would be utterly depressing.
The Arizona shooting was really sad, but I bet there’s hundreds of little kids getting shot all the time and we don’t know about it. Or are barely given any detail about, if it’s something like in a war.

I’m not entirely sure if it’s an issue on caring all that much though, rather than something to blab about by the water cooler. At least a lot of the time.

But eh. I know Speedy Boy. My dad was pretty good at making me aware of all this shit going on in the world, and he always cut out newspaper photos of starving kids and the like. He’d stick em on the fridge, so everytime I went to get food in there, I couldn’t bitch if I didn’t like what I saw, since those kids on the fridge don’t have any food.
This to say. He had a series of aftermath pictures of a bombing somewhere overseas in early 2000, I forgot where. But in one picture they show this smiling black kid, and in the next picture, he’s dead. They put his shoes besides him to put in his grave or something, some culture thing. The shoes said Speedy on them. I guess he wasn’t speedy enough.

I know, disgusting joke. But those pics always stayed with me, that poor innocent kid who never did anything to anyone. At least we knew about him through the media though. I just wish that some more of it was exposed, not to be morbid, but for awareness. I mean that everyone can see and hear about without having to look for it, unlike famous people deaths. I long forgot what I was getting at. Just hittin a spiel lol. I think the problem is distribution rather than how it affects others. I mean, whether we care or not, the knowledge is there.
Then again, I only know about Speedy Boy cuz of the paper. It was a bombing. He wasn’t the only to die. Haha I give your premise the perfect example. XD I suck. :D

Cheers to Speedy Boy and Christina Green all the same. Fuckin shitty ass world lol.

I don’t think people care any more or any less.

Most likely, celebrity draws attention from the media, which turns it into an “event”.

@Blackberry Is it just me or 99.9 % of the deaths played in the media are white by race? If it’s a young woman, it’s a pretty young woman. If it’s a kid, it’s a pretty white kid. I think the media is not racist but rather racial on this.

@mazingerz88 I’m pretty sure Michael Jackson was black at some point. XD

@mazingerz88 It probably depends upon where you live. I live in a US town where the race percentage is almost 50% black and 50% white. Of the local news about deaths, most of them pertain to black people. If you mean in the US national media, then yes, I would agree with you in that the percentage is significantly higher for the white race. On a global aspect, it might be another matter.

@Pied_Pfeffer – The US national news media is more concerned if the victim of a crime is a pretty, white (preferably blonde and blue eyed) child or woman, though. I think that’s what @mazingerz88 is getting at.

Unfortunately, this is most likely true.

Very small towns care about their loved ones of the community. Screw the famous people. Our little weekly 6 page newspaper has one page dedicated to memorials of those who recently died, and not one word of anyone famous.

@Symbeline My dad was pretty good at making me aware of all this shit going on in the world, and he always cut out newspaper photos of starving kids and the like. He’d stick em on the fridge, so everytime I went to get food in there, I couldn’t bitch if I didn’t like what I saw, since those kids on the fridge don’t have any food.

I would simply guess your Dad just wanted you to learn emphaty, most probably not being aware that in your age at that time, an unintended consequence and casualty will be your fascination with zombies and worse, your healthy normal human appetite.

Well yeah, that was his point. I’m just explaining it in my own little way. XD
And I loved zombies back then, too. :D

@Pied_Pfeffer Really? So the fact that a person learned that a little four year old died what was probably a hideous death wouldn’t affect some people at all? I mean, the Caylee thing didn’t hit me like it would have if I’d known the child/family myself, but I can’t help but feel something. I think there is something wrong with people who could read about that, or other cases of abuse and seriously not care.

@aprilsimnel You may well be right when it comes to a missing person case, particularly if it is a child. The cases that involve a mystery, be it a missing person or a sudden death, invoke curiosity from the general public. People are more likely to follow the news reports in order to find out what actually happened. Does the blame for the lack of media coverage in these cases where a minority is involved fall on the shoulders of the media or the people willing to follow the story?

@Dutchess_III You have a point. Please note that I responded from a more global aspect than narrowing it down to a specific group, such as a young child.

In my opinion, the death of a child is probably one of the worst experiences a human can have, no matter what the child’s age is. My heart went out to the parent(s) of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Osama Bin Laden when they were murdered, while many people focused on celebrating their deaths.

Does the blame for the lack of media coverage in these cases where a minority is involved fall on the shoulders of the media or the people willing to follow the story?

Yes!

@Pied_Pfeffer When I think of horrible people like Osama and Dahlmer, I think of the innocent little children they used to be, and my heart breaks for the child that they were.