Something worth crying about

Cable news has done a lot of things to me: moved me, informed me and humored me (on purpose and not). It wasn’t until recently that they took away my sense of empathy. John Travolta, who plays Terl in “Battlefield Earth,” filled the headlines this month when his son Jett died. I watched non-stop coverage of the death, and instead of feeling deep sympathy, I thought to myself, “Why is this considered relevant news?”

Of course, the death of Travolta’s son is tragic; I’m not an emotionally cold man. I still choke up every time I watch the end of “Big Fish.” But what struck me as so bizarre about this news coverage, and thus killed any emotional attachment I might have had, was that it existed entirely because of Travolta’s celebrity status.

I would assume that a grieving family would rather not have cameras perched around their home like vultures. I would rather have my news filled with information that affects me. Clearly the only ones who benefit from this are the news corporations and their ratings.

There was a lot of other news floating around in the ether for Anderson Cooper to talk about for 360 Degrees: the upcoming inauguration, the impeachment of Blagojevich, ransoms delivered to Somali pirates, protests in Oakland and a war breaking out between Gaza and Israel.

While these stories might have been covered in some fashion, I trust that if a network like CNN has James Earl Jones’ voice to say its name, it is capable of finding other stories around the world worthy of reporting. It could at least expand upon these stories past “missiles came from here and landed there.”

I tried to imagine all the possible ways Jett Travolta’s death truly mattered to me other than one less person consuming our oxygen supply, or perhaps how his dad might bring a different acting ability to his movies. If a previously unknown disease had claimed the boy’s life, or evidence had come out that Scientology had withheld treatment (it hasn’t), then I would concede its relevance in the nightly news.

Globalissues.org estimates that 26,500 children die each day from poverty. These unnamed young ones perished due to a multitude of reasons: poverty, hunger, preventable diseases and perhaps even one or two from Kawasaki Syndrome like Jett Travolta. There are two things immediately wrong with these figures: that we choose to spend hours listening about one person while thousands go ignored, and that there wouldn’t be enough time in a 24-hour news day to mention every one if they tried.

The news we decide to support says a lot about our society. Why do we spend months obsessing over Caylee Anthony, one tragic death, when there are 2,827 youth deaths from firearms each year? Perhaps it’s subconscious prejudice by choosing to highlight the deaths of white, upper-class Americans, or perhaps it’s our inability to care about other human beings unless they are famous or extremely attractive.

Maybe someday a time will come when news decides to give us relevant information. I can’t wait.