There is a tremendous problem going on with the news cycle.  The world has developed a severe case of ADD when it comes to following up on news stories and topics.  We move on almost immediately to the “next big story” completely oblivious to the holes still needing to be filled in the last big press push.

There are two major factors I see causing this problem. Firstly, is the internet.  Secondly, are cable news channels trying to keep up with the internet.

The internet is lightning fast.  With mechanisms such as Twitter, people can be connected and start getting reports of crisis and disaster all over the world before any other news source.  This sparks an awareness level.  There’s not much detail there and it can be hard to follow.  Hashtags can help but there’s often inconsistency in how people use this system. 

We’ll run through a hypothetical situation throughout this column.  Let’s say there is a huge Earthquake in Los Angeles.  People start tweeting about how the ground is shaking or maybe a building next door has started to collapse.  Others tweet bout how they have found shelter in a certain area.  The mainstream news begins to pick up on this story.

LA is a big city so there are reporters about pretty quickly.  We start to get breaking news coverage about the quake seeping into television programming.  Newspapers run stories online since they won’t print a new paper copy until tomorrow morning.  Reports start flowing about shelters and rescue efforts a few hours later as things calm down a bit. 

Then, later that evening, a prominent politician dies when his plane fails and he crashes into a mountain.  Suddenly, no one cares any more about the Earthquake.  Coverage is still there but now it’s in half hour updates as the news focuses on this plane crash.

Questions come in about the safety record of the plane, there is suspicions of sabotage as this politician was a prominent supporter of a critical bill.

The next morning a war breaks out between two nations and there is a huge push from Washington to send troops to support one side or the other.  Now no one cares about the Earthquake or the investigations into the death of the Politician.

Some people would call this a conspiracy.  The war was a staged effort by some massive shadow group known as THEM in an effort to cover up the death of the Politician.  Or possibly even to cover up the actions of some other event all together.

The reality is, it’s all just a huge ratings grab.  CNN, FOX News, all want to get the eyeballs of the public, so they all cover the same stories ad nauseum.  If people want Earthquake news, they’ll get Earthquake news, if they want war news, they’ll get war news.  The real question is, who determines what the people want?  No one wants to chance missing out so they all dog pile onto every new event as  it occurs.

Let’s look out a week after our hypothetical news cycle.  Now all the news cares about is the scandal between two celebrity couples or how there’s potential racism going on inside a big city police department.  People in LA may still be without power and those two countries are now lobbing rockets at each other but we don’t care, we’ve moved on.

The information is still out there on these stories, most often online.  The problem is, it’s buried deep beneath a sea of more recent stories.  Or it’s been researched by some small website that gathers maybe 1000 visitors a month.  The other issue is that some of this research into older news stories is picked up by people who see conspiracy around every corner.

Some blogger on “thecoverup.com” researching the death of the Politician in his plane is likely only every going to conclude foul play.  Even if he actually could afford the time, cost, and effort to go to the crash site and somehow managed to get in to inspect the plane himself and to question those who worked on the plane, that is, if he actually did some real investigating, he’s still likely only looking for the conspiracy angle.

Thus, as mainstream media has been caught up with ratings and flash, the obscure-stream media tends to be caught up in the glam of “everyone’s out to get you”.

In the end, it all just comes down to a numbers game.  No one has time to do real research and everyone has their own bias.  It’s easy to armchair quarterback the news but what happens where there’s no real good news to watch?