The fiancee was telling me about it yesterday or I'd have no idea what ya'll are talking about, and I recall her saying that initially they thought everyone was dead and only learned that everyone survived when they heard tapping while looking for bodies. You can see how the media would be all over that; these days it doesn't take much more than the word "bodies" to have five photographers, three columnists and a partridge in a pear tree in your front yard.

It IS an interesting group psyche experiment though, because for all the talk about this, that or the other evil thing that "the media" is doing, the fact is they air what people watch. If they don't, the ratings slip, sponsors go with them and pretty soon you're PBS: The highest quality programming that virtually no one watches. So, while I agree with those who say negative stories tend to predominate on the news, just as I agree with those who say there's too much sex and violence, my prescription remains the same: Stop watching that garbage, or if you refuse to do so, stop giving me all the self-righteous crap about the one "ripped from todays headlines" legal/crime drama, or "death in some place you've never heard of" tabloid TV show or "shooting rampage" news story you choose to condemn, out of the dozens you regularly and avidly enjoy.

Negative stories predominate on the news for two reasons: Tragedy and drama are inherently interesting to humans because they provoke an emotional visceral response, and we've decided as a culture that whether it's a work of fiction or real people bled for your entertainment no longer matters.