"Bad news makes good copy"...1000 safe plane landings don't make the news, but one incident does....sensational television about crooks, prostitutes, and sitcoms starring people who play pretty pathetic characters (think the entire cast of Sinefeld)make people process information and view life as it is presented in the media.

"Feel good" television and movies don't do as well over time as disaster films, police dramas, etc. Even comedic entertainment presents "slice of life" situations that most people would never encounter...(paranoia, pettiness, dishonesty, etc).

The ability to do graphics which are extremely realistic, bbut not likely also present sensational situations which are entertaining, but don't really represent the way things are in real life.


There are some really interesting content analysis studies which track the use of language and incidents and compare the ratio to what happens in real life...it's scary.

200 plus channels constitute a massive amount of entertainment which skues attitudes and perceptions.In a sense, we are becoming what we watch.

Increasingly, the challenge is to separate
entertainment from reality.

Russ