Thanks for your kind words and compliments.

I agree with your point.

It is certainly the media driving the process; they're the instigators.

Yesterday I wrote of respected reporter Lyle Denniston's quondam general observation that the essence of the journalistic mind-set is a natural curiosity combined with an instinctive and unapologetic desire to be the first one on the block who knows "what's going on" and tell the world what he's found out.

As noted previously, in fairness to Denniston, this general description or profile was of an individual reporter-- a "retail" version; it wasn't intended to summarize or contain all of the wholesale attributes of corporate media journalism in general.

Denniston's description of the "Natural-Born Reporter", as I dubbed it, at worst reduces reporting to glorified gossipmongering. But it suggests a fundamentally moral and wholesome activity, serving the greater social good of informing the public even if it does give the "gossipmonger" a thrill.

In reality, the corporate journalist's employers corrupt this natural process with nefarious functions, e.g. manufacturing consent, and Stirring up the Shit. So I agree that it is first and foremost the media ghouls who take the lead in trolling for responses from anyone even vaguely connected to a crime or catastrophe, and showcasing the most ignorant, sensational, and hysterical reactions.

I've become habituated to it, but it used to truly horrify me when teevee local news, already devoted to the "if it bleeds, it leads" philosophy, was able with improved technology to zoom in with maximum close-ups on, say, relatives arriving at a murder scene.

This is no fluke or accident; some producer or director instructs the camera operator to zoom in on a shrieking parent or sibling in hysterical transports of grief, to amplify the noises of raw, primitive emotion-- often with only tear-stained cheek and snot-dripping nose filling the frame.

Blustering rage and anger are also Editor's Choices. It's as if they're using infra-red cameras that automatically target heat at the expense of light.

For media professionals, this is "all good", especially if it's an exclusive.

After all, given a choice between, say, a composed and articulate face thoughtfully commenting on a given story and a gibbering, snarling, shrieking nitwit in transports of rage or grief-- which is more likely to cause the beer-swilling Everyman to change the channel?

Rubberneckers don't pull over to gape because motorists are driving properly and safely, after all. Appealing to the basest instincts of the mass audience may seem unfortunate-- but bidness is bidness.

I do think that this process eventually becomes reciprocal, as has long since been the case in Amerika. The "fifteen minutes of fame" syndrome was originally derisive, in general; i.e. the premise is that persons with no substantive claim to fame were artificially made briefly famous.

One might say that the derisive emphasis was on the "fifteen minutes", and such "fame" was pretty cheap and tawdry when pro-rated.

Over the years, however, its as if the concept flipped into a false positive: fifteen minutes of fame! Where's mine?

But your point is well-taken. One ought not to condemn the People in general, since we're not all running down to the Jerry Springer studio to hoot, howl, and holler while our pathetic lives are being dissected and exposed before millions of fellow low-lives.

That would be an error similar to judging comments threads by their trolls and Killfiled.

A brocheh upon you!

A gezunt ahf dein kop!

A leben ahf dir!

And that's just the "A"s!

Shalom aleichem!