Media Literacy: Is This News?

Warning: rant ahead. I'm stewing about another incident of dumbed down/sexed up this-isn't-really-news news on a news show.

I don't usually watch the network evening news shows, but last night I happened to see a segment on ABC that struck me as strange. It had something to do with a criminal in Australia who initially confessed to a reporter while crying, then pointed a gun and drove away in the reporter's van. I didn't watch the whole segment, but even so I found myself thinking, really? This is important enough, here in America, to rate a mention on a network's flagship evening news show? After that thought, I didn't think anything more about it until I saw the same segment on the local news this morning, then again, the very same segment on Good Morning America. You may have heard something about a member of AC/DC getting arrested for attempted murder, but this has nothing to do with that. The man with a gun in a car wasn't famous.

So why is this Australian criminal getting so much coverage here in America? Because there's video. CNN has the story too; you can see it here.