I visited the website tenbyten.org a few days ago and was discouraged by what I saw. Murder. Terrorism. Nuclear. Attack. Bomb. The list unfortunately goes on.

For those of you who aren?t familiar with the site, tenbyten is a snapshot of 100 pictures that correspond to the top stories from international news sources (BBC World Edition, Reuters and the New York Times International News) and is updated every hour. There are no editors who choose which keywords or stories go on the site. Thus there is no bias, no criticism or comment about the stories that are on the site.

The website says ?10×10 (‘ten by ten’) is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world.?

The pictures are supposed to reflect the top and most important stories in the world, when in fact it reflects the stories that the media think is the most important in the world.

Every hour the stories supposedly change, but the themes of these stories remain the same.

It seems that the news has become a murder/kidnapping show. Where?s the love? I?m trying not to be too idealistic about this world and I know that in reality there is a lot of violence surrounding us, but why does the media choose to bombard us everyday with mainly stories about crime? Is it really just because there are so many wars going on or is the media selecting crime stories (purposely or not) to get more readers and thus more advertising? Maybe it?s not as simple as that.

?The more outlandish the crime, the greater media attention it will get,? says Cecil Greek, a professor at Florida State University, in his lecture on crime and the media. Also ?Disasters- This includes actual and averted ones, and both natural and accidental disasters. Floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, plane crashes and fires are examples. Disasters allows opportunities for heroism. Firemen, disaster crew workers, and ordinary citizens who respond heroically become newsworthy in such situations. 9/11 made NYPD and NYFD into international heroes.?

The ?depressed press? as columnist William Safire puts it, believes that ?bad news is newsier than good news,? which suggests that the media publishes more stories on crime when it could be reporting on something else, purely because more people want to read it. People like reading bad news rather than good news because it more exciting. It seems that bad news is ?real? news and good news is not important and not news-worthy.

I am not suggesting that the media should stop snooping around to reveal crime that has occurred, for example in governments. The media?s job is to question and dig up information that people and governments should be held accountable for. However the media is over-reporting crime and not giving enough attention to more worthy stories such as the social conditions that lead to crime.

Back to tenbyten. The website allows us to click on a picture and involve ourselves into the story more deeply. ?This allows us to dart in and out of the news, understanding both the individual stories and the ways in which they relate to each other,? says the site. We are supposed to be shocked at the diversity of the pictures; where a photo of a nuclear warhead site, a photo of Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah?s couch is supposed to sit beside it. Unfortunately that diversity is rare. Instead there is nuclear warhead sitting beside a soldier holding an AK sitting beside toxic fumes, sitting beside Saddam Hussein, sitting beside?

Some critics argue that crime does not dominate news, it just appears that way because we are more likely to remember stories about crime. That may be true to an extent but when I look back at top stories and when I look at tenbyten which displays the international top stories every hour side by side, I see that there is little truth in these claims. Crime is entertainment to the public and the media does exploit this knowledge. Look at the number of crime TV shows and true-crime books written by journalists themselves.

I do not think that it is as simple as saying that the media is increasing the coverage of crime to increase profits. There are passionate and dedicated journalists who understand which stories are newsworthy and which are not. News values should play a more important role than profits. The issue is in the hands of the journalists and editors who shape our knowledge of the news. It is up to us to decide how we analyze the importance of the news they give us.






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