Bigger, better stories drive the media

I was watching the TV news one night several years ago when, almost as an aside, they hustled one more story onto the end of the broadcast. It was about a man, a Native American, found dead in a park. All signs pointed to murder, police said.

And that was that. On to the weather.

The story sticks in my mind because of another story that dominated the news that day. Two people, Kathleen Sheets and Steven Christensen, had been murdered by package bombs, and Salt Lake City was in a frenzy over who did it.

Eventually, notorious forger Mark Hofmann was convicted of the Sheets and Christensen murders in a case that wound up mesmerizing the nation.

I never heard another word about that Indian.

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Being in the news business, I constantly marvel at the inequity of news coverage. Some stories get covered like a chili dog. Others barely get noticed. And often the basics of the two can be nearly identical.

Take, for instance, this past Monday when a Suburban crashed in southeastern Utah, killing eight and injuring seven.

The tragedy ranks among the worst car crashes in state history, certainly on a par with the 2005 crash of a van in northern Utah that left nine people dead and two injured.

But whereas that 2005 tragedy dominated the news, Monday's wreck registered barely a blip on media radar.

True, those involved in 2005 were Utah State University students and faculty, while those involved in Monday's crash were illegal aliens from Mexico and Guatemala.

But if obscurity of the victims dulled the story, timing finished it off.

About the same time the Suburban was rolling, a lone gunman at Virginia Tech University went on a shooting spree.

All else faded in the wake of the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history. If only Don Imus had chosen to speak about Rutgers women's basketball a week later.

Every media outlet of consequence rushed to Virginia. President Bush flew there. Flags waved at half-staff and memorials were held around the nation. This was a story, capital S.

For those of us watching in Utah, it was unavoidable to compare what happened in Virginia to the Feb. 12 shooting spree at Trolley Square.