Attention Depicted In The Film Nightcrawler

In a globalized world with media pouring in from all around the world, it becomes increasingly difficult to decide what is important enough to view, and what isn’t. That job falls into the hands of news sources whose purpose is to gain as much attention as possible. Today the headlining story is the most dramatic story, not the most important. Stories beyond the scope of the United States and its interests are unlikely to garner the attention they deserve. The film Nightcrawler captures this idea best “to capture the spirit of what we air, is think of our news cast as a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut.” -Nightcrawler (2014). This is positive feedback in its truest form reacting to the immediate and the dramatic.
What is and is not important is a hard to consider when working on such large scales. In the case of Santos winning the Nobel peace prize, very few people will personally be affected by this news outside of Colombia. In this case it is not entirely surprising that this story was lacking in attention in both top down and bottom up distribution models. Because it did not garner wide spread attention does not mean that the events that transpired are unimportant or insignificant. If the aim of media is to be seen by as many people as possible It is reasonable that it did not receive huge amounts of attention in the news. Out of the six media outlets viewed, the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize was only headlining on two outlets (NPR, and Reddit). Two news outlets (Huffington Post, and Wikinews) did not feature the story at all on their front pages. At the time the trending stories were primarily related to Hurricane Matthew or the election, both impending disasters looming over the United States at the time. Many of the headlining stories the Nobel Prize story was competing with are prime examples of positive feedback. Because these stories grow to such epic proportions, they have the power to completely eclipse ‘smaller’ stories. In the case of a Santos winning the Nobel Peace Prize, a story with limited coverage on many major news outlets its feedback was more effected by other
Santos winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and the vote for peace is a story that only affects Colombians. In the past few days the story of the Colombian Conflict suddenly reached the attention of the world after years of little to no coverage missing out on years of background information required to fully understand the story. All the articles mention the fifty-year conflict and the hundreds of thousands of lives that were lost through the time or directly impacted by the events. In all of the articles the coverage of this is very brief not giving the attention the story fully deserves. News sources outside of Colombia failed to capture the feelings and tension associated with the historic vote for peace and winning of the Nobel Peace Prize. There is a distinct advantage that the top down models hold over the bottom up news sources. The articles from bottom up sources are not charged with the raw emotions and feelings that are so often present with politics. By looking at Santos’ winning of the Nobel Peace Prize with an outside perspective they are able to provide a more accurate story reflecting all sides of the issue. The articles from the Guardian and The New York Times include quotes from the citizens of Colombia on their thoughts attempting to show the opposition, and supporting sides equally. Ultimately the goal of these articles is to try and foster a fair and balanced