I'm blogging this while watching the 13th miner being rescued from the Chilean mine. It's extraordinary. I've only just tuned in but I can tell from the activity on twitter and the volume of facebook statuses about it that it has been transfixing people for most of the day. News 24 must be getting its highest viewing figures for the year. They have more content than they can use- underground shots, capsule shots, family shots, interviews, archive inserts of the disaster. The journalist doing the running commentary has been speaking for hours, but never runs out of things to say. It is one of those rare stories that feels completely universal- jeopardy, potential tragedy, human ingenuity and resiliance, and most important of all, a happy ending. For once our priorities seem in the right place- this is about family, and good attitude, and leaving no man behind. The complexities of a giant corporation, the cost, the political negotiations, and all those using this story to boost their own image are subsumed in the straighforwardly good news story being told, and shown, and dissected, 33 times.
Is this a good thing? It is certainly heart warming. It feels sort of nostalgic to see so much of our usually fragmented and distracted population united on one strory. It is a good news story, and we all need more of those. For Christians it is exciting to see prayer and God given more air time than the rest of the month's TV put together.
And yet. So much else is going on the world today. So many other stories, good and bad. Do we need to have rolling coverage? Can we not rejoice with these miners and their families, thank God for their lives whilst still covering some of those? Or is this culturally important, a rare ritual that we should just run with? Let the other stories wait? Give in to letting the world seem a friendly, uncomplicated place? I'm not sure what I think, but I imagine I'll keep watching.
I think this blanket coverage tells us something about what TV does well and what it doesn't. Of course it is creating a massive and rather wonderful sense of social bonding around the world. I think there are lots of reasons for that. The images are iconic and the audiences will be huge. It's not just to do with the story of course, but what the story symbolises. The rising from the ground; the sense of re-birth; the triumph of technology over nature - it's not hard to see the appeal of the imagery. TV does this well.
But you are right of course to say that there are other things happening in the world that are inevitably pushed off the news by this rolling coverage. News editors have to be very careful about this. The Chilean story is a gift to a rolling news service with 24 hours to fill. It's expensive to cover, so the economics demand that big media outlets who have spent the money to get there have to run many hours of it to make it worthwhile.
However many news stories are covered in whatever depth they will of course be highly selective. TV sifts and sorts and makes its own pick that is a blend of drama and entertainment. Decisions about news values are never simply about the relative importance of the event. 2500 miners died in China last year. Who knew?
Our mistake is ever to believe that TV news (or any other medium) is in any way comprehensive or gives a balanced account of events. And that is indeed a mistake that many of us commonly make. Perhaps, when historians look back on our culture, they will observe that we were far too quick to allow our understanding of the world to be defined and limited by what is mediated rather than what we experience directly. Perhaps the most important thing we can do each day is to go outside and switch off the TV. I hear a bike is a good way of doing that!