How news organisations choose which stories to push is sometimes a mystery, often quite arbitrary and regularly criticised.
How news organisations choose which stories to push is sometimes a mystery, often quite arbitrary and regularly criticised.
It is this process of news selection, or copy tasting that completely undermines any claims to objectivity the media usually aspires to.
This week the biggest story in most major news organisations around the world has been the birth of a boy in the British royal family.
It is not surprising that the British public should be interested in the domestic situation of their most photogenic royal couple, but it's amazing how pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have dominated front pages and news bulletins on every continent.
It might seem strange that this event has been accorded such importance because although it can be argued that the birth of a prince is an event of grand consequence, how significant are royals in modern life?
Prince George Alexander Louis is currently third in line to the throne, which means that he will probably only get to wear the crown in about 40 years time.
Presuming his dad abdicates in his 70s.
So why was the birth of George Alexander Louis, or GAL (they really didn’t think this through) deemed more important, or rather more worthy of a front page picture, than ongoing riots in Egypt, the Pope’s visit to Brazil or the looming showdown between the USA and Russia over the Snowden affair?
It might be that the public is tired of the endless number of bad news stories and is happy to have something to be happy about.
The birth of Prince GAL is not going to change anybody’s life and it was really of no significance to the French people, yet even French papers plastered pictures of the Cambridges on their front pages.
Perhaps media organisations went crazy because everyone else was setting up outside the Lindo wing of the St Mary’s hospital in London. Competition for a good spot was fierce.
How could a news editor explain to her boss why everyone else was there and her organisation wasn’t? On the other hand, maybe we all sat glued to our TV sets because the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are just a good-looking couple.
Prince William looked cool, calm and collected as he put the baby seat in the car himself. Then he was the epitome of self-confidence when he got behind the wheel and drove off.
Kate looked so gorgeous less than 24 hours after giving birth to a rather large baby and people must be wondering how she did it.
How can anyone look like a movie star so soon after pushing out a whopper?
In the end it seems that it was quite an easy decision to cover the arrival of the new prince and any major organisation that failed to do so probably lost a fair number of supporters.
