I’ve always found it interesting how quickly major news events fade from view. I wrote about it in one of my first posts on this blog.
“Every once and a while a crisis appears on society’s collective conscious. It attracts an overwhelming amount of attention. Every media outlet is commenting on it. Your newsfeed fills with posts commenting on the outrage. People start demanding that “something” is done. That “something” has to change. And then, a few weeks later, poof… it disappears.
The event disappears from attention faster than it arrived. It fades from memory, not like a vacation you took last week, but instead like that thing you forgot to do this morning. You forget that you forget. It disappears so quickly and completely that unless reminded it is easy to forget that it was even a thing.”
We retain a vague memory of the panic these events incited. We wonder if we’re still going to have issues with radiation from Japan, or Ebola in Africa, or with the giant plastic island in the Pacific, but no one really knows what is going on now and no one takes the time to hold journalists accountable for the fear they spread with initial reporting after the event.
Thinking about this, an interesting idea for a podcast came to mind, a show that explores the mass hysterias of the past, covering the reporting at the time, the projects for the future, and the real follow up on the results.
For example, it would cover the hysteria around the Fukushima nuclear reactor issues, the assumptions and projects at the time, and what really happened up until today.
You could do the same with dozens of issues over the past decade:
- Greek Debt Crisis
- Ebola
- Swine Flu
- ZIKA
- Elephant trophy imports
A great name for the show would simply be Old News. Since these issues are out of the public spotlight today, you could likely get great guests on the show, because no other media is clamoring for their attention.
It is an idea that I’m definitely not going to take, so if you’ve been looking for a podcast idea, jump on it!
Leave a Reply