View From the Phlipside - When is a story a story?

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

How big does a story have to be to be a big story?  A political assassination requires only two people, assassin and victim.  But it is inevitably a big story.  How many million people catch cold each winter?  Yet that’s not a news story 999 times out of a thousand.  The recent story about the planned Q’uran burning has me thinking about when a story makes the big time.

I’m not going to discuss whether I think it was a good idea or not, you’ll probably figure my position out for yourself.  This is about the media circus that surrounded this non-event and what we need to learn from it.

Based on the number of column inches and screen time devoted to it this was a big story.  Every major network had large investments of time and manpower in covering it.  We learned a lot about the characters involved and heard a lot of analytical embroidery around the edges.  My question is - why?

The size estimates I heard on the church is question ranged from 30 to 50.  Now I did a quick, off the top of my head estimate of how many people live on my street.  I live on a one block long street.  And there at least that many people living on my street.  Somewhere just below 50.  About 15 houses.  If we had a big bonfire in the middle of the block would anyone outside of Mayville care?  Probably not.  Nor should they.

This is an unknown pastor from a tiny church that represents a small fraction of the population of their hometown.  For whatever reason they were going to burn the holy book of another religion.  Suddenly this became of interest to the entire nation.  The only reason why this was a story was because we made it a story.  It’s a self perpetuating cycle.  If we ignore it it never becomes a story.  As soon as we make it a story then we can’t ignore it and it begins to grow.

I’m not saying to ignore the story because I believe in censoring the news.  I’m saying we should have ignored this story because it wasn’t ever a story.  Not beyond three sentences on page 27 or 10 seconds of screen time.  Whatever damage has been done in the tattered relationship between our nation and the Muslim communities of the world can not be laid at the feet of that pastor.  That blame lies firmly with the media and one other group.  That would be us the consumers of information.  If the media isn’t smart enough to know what isn’t a story then we should.

And we should have let this one burn itself out by itself.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010