Enough already! We don’t care about Scott Peterson, Laci Peterson, and their unborn child, and we never fucking did. Who cares if he was convicted on completely circumstantial evidence and was shtupping some blonde days after he may or may not have killed his own wife (but was definitely missing, even if he’s innocent).
The whole case is fucking irrelevant to my life. And I’ve got a pregnant wife, and it’s just before Xmas, and it’s still fucking irrelevant. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about this stupid little case that only made the news because it happened during the holidays.
And you know what? The next case that pops up in the next two weeks to “grip the nation”? We won’t care about that either!
So colleagues of mine in the TV industry-- take a big breath and leave the tent city constructed outside of the courthouse. There’s a big world out there, and you’ve been living like hippies in a commune for months, obsessed with minutiae of a stupid case that nobody cares about. You may as well be discussing Kasparov’s training plan.
As much as I agree with you about the whole affair, I think you got that part wrong. It made the news because it has so many sensational elements: a beautiful woman, a handsome man, a baby, a homewrecker, a picture-perfect marriage marred by unthinkable disaster. It’s the kind of stuff classic American drama is made of.
While most male viewers are sick to death of the Peterson story, the story is still a magnet for many (not all) female viewers because it hits lots of hot buttons for them. Princess Diana’s death was the same deal. It (and the drama surrounding it) went on and on, way past when most stories of this type would have faded. again because of female viewers interest in the details.
As a female, I have been, at times, mildly interested in it. But not that much. My mom, on the other hand, buys “scandal sheets” (Inquirer, Star, etc.) and keeps up on all the goings on, and can watch hours of news coverage on end if she doesn’t stop herself.
I am interested, to a certain degree, in hearing about such cases, and yes, this has that drama thing that Liberal mentioned, but really. A few minutes’ update now and then is really all that is needed to follow what’s going on. Not hours and hours.
They’re giving the people what they want. If people didn’t want to hear about the case, then ratings would go down and the networks would back off the story. Quite the opposite occurs, Peterson coverage has high ratings therefore the networks give it a lot of air time. Television is just reacting to what the people want to see.
What surprises me is that, as dramatic as the Peterson case is, there is even more dramatic stuff going on in the world. The example which springs to mind is the election crisis in Ukraine: attempted murder, poison, a huge peaceful protest of pro-democratic youths, and Putin as the grand puppetmaster. However, there is very little airtime devoted to that in comparison to the Peterson case. It seems as though we are driven to the [relatively] small importance. I don 't mean to denigrate the tragedy; both families have the right to be devastated, and what occured was horrible, and Scott should recieve the death penalty. However, we have something that can affect foriegn policy for decades going on in the Ukraine, and v. few people know all that much about the major players.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that covering one single “news” story in the States is a lot cheaper than actually maintaining an international news division or extended US coverage.
That’s one thing I’ll never understand about the media.
With dozens upon dozens of murders occuring daily in this country how they can latch onto so few, build them into theses huge stories with sensationalism and hype, and milk them until they’re bone dry, as if unjustified killings are a rare thing.
So a guy having an affair kills his wife. Like that never happened before?
Oh, but wait! She was pregnant and it was Christmas Eve! Now we have a story.
I think the media is lazy and this story is all too easy to cover.
I really have to agree with myself in this instance. You’re missing a lot of the juice. She was beautiful. He was handsome. The baby was already named. Everyone thought it was a fairytale marriage. He sold her car. He tried to sell their house. He even manufactured a cheesy disguise, filled his pockets full of cash, and tried to head to Mexico. There were issues of pre-birth murder. Homewrecker confession with complete remorse. Audio tapes. Dramatic lies in national press interviews. Bodies washing up on shore. And yada yada yada.
