Making the Cut: An Analysis of the Factors
Lauren Cox

            Affecting the Extent of Media Coverage of a Death
One of the most popular ideas regarding the publicity of death that has emerged in the writings of sociologists and historians over the past thirty years is that death is “publicly absent but privately present,” (Walter, Littlewood, & Pickering, 1995). However, the same authors who cite these writings argue that there is, in fact, “one arena that is very public and in which death makes a more-than daily appearance: the mass media…Death regularly appears in various informational and entertainment media, and in specific genres and narratives,” (Walter, Littlewood, & Pickering, 1995). One area of the media in which death makes a frequent appearance is the news, and this is significant because the news receives a considerable amount of authority and credibility as a result of its “rhetoric of factuality” (Walter, Littlewood, & Pickering, 1995).

An average of 6,360 people die each day in the United States alone (National Center for Health Statistics, 2003). Time and space constraints allow only a tiny minority of deaths to actually be reported in the news. There appear to be a number of factors that increase the extent of media coverage of a death. The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of these factors and to examine underlying motivations in the selection process.

The first, and perhaps most obvious, factor that increases media coverage of a death is if the person who dies is famous. Burt A, Folkart, biographical editor of the Los Angeles Times, stated that, “Generally speaking, the people who have generated news, good or bad, while they were alive are likely to get bigger play when they die,” (Laura, 1984). Walter, Littlewood, and Pickering (1995) note that “the underlying journalistic principle here [is] that those who live in public cannot expect to die in public.” They also state that “the reporting of the deaths of politicians, television personalities, rock stars, and so on, uses well-worn criteria of newsworthiness, and extrapolates already existing affective themes of celebrity discourse.” Thus, the deaths of well-known figures are naturally reported, often as a grand finale to the reports of their lives. The important point to note about celebrity deaths, however, is that the cause of death does not necessarily have to be outrageous in any way. For example, Mother Theresa died simply and of natural causes; she had lived a long and full life. Nevertheless, her death was made known throughout the entire world by the news media. Many deaths occur in this same manner every day, and they are rarely reported. Thus, if people become interesting in the public eye while they are alive, then their deaths are more likely to also be of interest to the public.

Another factor that makes a person’s death interesting and adds to its newsworthiness is if the person is relatively young when he or she dies. Indeed, as Signorile (1999) states, “The news media know that young, beautiful people cut down in their prime resonate with the public.” The key phrase in this sentence is “cut down in their prime”. When a person dies at a young age, there is always a sense of lost potential, the idea that, had he or she lived longer, he or she would have been able to do great things to benefit the world. However, an average of 982 people under the age of 54 die each day in the United States, and this is still too many deaths for all of them to be covered (World Health Organization, 1999). Thus, this factor is most clearly seen when combined with another factor, such as fame; it has the ability to increase the amount of media coverage of a death that is already in the news. For example, the death of Princess Diana, who was already an extremely visible public figure, “provoked an unprecedented media extravaganza” Signorile (1999). Other young celebrity deaths that experienced large amounts of media coverage include those of John F. Kennedy, John Lennon, and River Phoenix. These individuals were all extremely talented, whether as leaders, musicians, or actors, and thus, their deaths influenced the public by robbing people of their ability to enjoy the benefits of these talents in the future.

Almost all of the deaths of young people that appear in the news involve some sort of immediacy or unexpectedness. After all, one does not often hear in the news of a teenager who has died of cancer. Immediate deaths, whether they occur to people who are young or old, receive extensive coverage in the news because they are new information. If a person were expected to die at a certain time and in a certain way, then the death would no longer be news to the public. Many of the deaths previously mentioned, such as those of Princess Diana and John Lennon, all had this element of immediacy along with youth and fame. They took the world by surprise, and thus, the world was curious about everything connected with the incidents.

The news coverage of a death that is immediate and unexpected is further increased if the death is vivid. This means that, through the news media, the public is actually able to see the scene of the death, or at least hear about it in great detail. Thanks to modern technology, news stations are able to broadcast footage of the scene at which a death occurred almost immediately after it has happened. However, one factor that makes a death immensely more vivid is if the death is actually being televised. Examples include the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the blowing up, soon after take-off, of the Challenger space shuttle, the on-camera suicide of Budd Dwyer, and the attack on the World Trade Center (Walter, Littlewood, & Pickering, 1995; Elliot & Lester, 2002). Indeed, the Kennedy assassination revealed for the first time the awesome immediacy of television over all other forms of news media (Jameson, 1991 as cited in Walter, Littlewood, & Pickering, 1995). In these cases, the public actually witnessed the deaths occurring; they were not merely exposed to the aftermaths. This is important because by becoming witnesses, people feel a connection with the person who has died. They yearn to stay connected by continuing to watch the news and staying updated as to the circumstances surrounding the death. The news media, in response to this public yearning, supplies extensive news coverage of a death in which so many people are interested and feel a connection.

One very significant factor that determines the extent of media coverage of a death is the strangeness of the circumstances surrounding the death. Walter, Littlewood, and Pickering (1995) state, “Death has to be viewed, in terms of established news values, as way out of the ordinary for those who are closely related or involved with the dead to be given public voice.” Indeed, as people in today’s society become more desensitized to violence and death in the news, the more shocking and outrageous the deaths must be in order for people to take notice (Walter, Littlewood, & Pickering, 1995). Furthermore, strange circumstances surrounding a death help to peak the public’s curiosity, which then leads people to want to learn more about the death by watching the news. For example, any time there is a mystery surrounding the cause of a death, the greater chance that the death will receive extensive news coverage. One instance is the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey. Mass suicides, such as the one committed by members of the Heaven’s Gate cult, also elicit a great deal of coverage because they are so out of the ordinary. In fact, any time that multiple people die in one place, and as a result of the same cause, is considered an unusual and newsworthy event. It seems to emphasize the fact that the deaths did not occur naturally. As stated before, an average of 6,360 people die each day in the United States (NCHS, 2003). However, the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 caused approximately 2,893 deaths, and all of those did not even occur immediately (CBS News, 2002). However, the coverage of the deaths that occurred as a result of the attack was immense compared to the coverage of all of the individual deaths that occur on a daily basis. Now, it can of course be argued that the media coverage surrounding the attack on the World Trade Center was justified for a number of reasons other than the fact that many people died in the same place at the same time, and thus, another example might be more appropriate. An average of 276 people die each day as a result of motor vehicle accidents (WHO, 1999). However, when Flight 747 crashed in 1994, 132 people were killed (Burgess, 2002). In both cases, all of the deaths were caused by accidents, and since they did not occur as a result of natural causes, many people may see them as occurring prematurely. The reason that the plane crash received so much more media coverage than all of the motor vehicle accidents is that it is quite unusual for so many people to die of the same cause. Also, if multiple deaths occur as a result of a single incident, than many people are affected by that incident. Because they are affected by it, they want to learn more about it.

Another factor that affects the extent of news coverage of a death is how close the death is “to home”, meaning the extent to which it directly affects the people who are watching or reading the news. “As a general rule, the closer the person or public occurrence to the audience, the greater justification for extensive coverage or pictures,” (Elliot & Lester, 2002). This is because people feel a connection with those whom they consider to be like them. A sense of belongingness occurs as a people shape their identities as members of a group based on their location, nationality, race, etc. Because they see themselves as a members of a group, they then tends to care more about people and events that occur within their group than those that occur outside of it. In addition, if a death occurs within a group to which a person identifies, there is a greater chance that the person will be affected by the death in some way. Since humans’ sense of self is at the center of their worlds, they will focus more on events that affect them personally than those that do not (Myers, 2002). The news reflects this tendency to care more about deaths that occur “closer to home”. After all, one is much more likely to see a report of a person who was murdered in his or her own city than a person who was murdered in a third-world country. In addition, deaths to which a person can relate in some way might cause the person to feel a sense of replacement, meaning that the person might feel that because of his or her similarities to the deceased, he or she could easily have been the one who died instead. Walter, Littlewood, and Pickering (1995) write, “News audiences are likely to experience…vicarious pain on behalf of those suffering and/or anxiety that this could happen to them or to their children. Without this identification, news reports would imply that death does not happen to people like us; with it, they worryingly reveal our own mortality even at the tea-table.” Therefore, people tune into news stories about deaths because it enables them to continue to connect with similar people and to prepare themselves for their own impending death. The news also gives people a sense of security because of the authority that the news media seems to possess. The news keeps the public updated as to what is being done to fix the problems that caused newsworthy deaths. This allows the public to feel safe because they believe that something is being done to protect them from a similar death.
Another factor that affects the extent of media coverage of a death, and that is possibly connected to the sense of replacement mentioned previously, is when a person dies “in the line of duty”. It is the job of policemen, firefighters, those in the military, etc. to protect the citizens of their city or country. Thus, if a person dies while working to protect others, then these other people feel a connection with that person. He or she becomes their hero, in a sense, because he or she died in place of them. Perhaps this is why the news media reports the deaths of soldiers who are killed in Iraq. It might also be why, when police officers and firefighters are killed at work in Memphis, TN, they receive a great deal of coverage on local news networks, and these networks encourage donations for the families of the deceased.

Finally, the news media often chooses to report deaths that “provide close glimpses of particular victims in order to illustrate national problems, dramatic vignettes that bring home the personal ramifications of the great public issues of the day,” (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987). One dramatic example of this is the school shootings, such as those that occurred in Jonesboro and Columbine. The deaths that occurred at these schools were widely reported because they showed that there were problems that needed to be addressed with today’s youth. Another prime example was the death of Matthew Shepherd, a young man who was murdered because he was gay. Signorile (1999) writes that the news media made Shepherd into a “larger-than-life worldwide symbol of the evils of homophobia.” Thus, the news media focuses on just a few deaths that have the potential to arouse sympathy in people, and these sympathetic feelings then cause people to work towards solving the larger societal problems that the deaths represented.

Josef Stalin once said, “The death of a single Russian soldier is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic,” (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987). Indeed, one newspaper’s defense of the journalistic practice of personalizing tragedies states, “For tragedy to be given real meaning, it needs to have a context – it needs to be explained and sometimes, perhaps even always, the best way to do that is through the personal story of those people caught up in it” (Walter, Littlewood, & Pickering, 1995). Although there are time and space limitations on the number of deaths that can be reported, the news media does not even report the maximum number of deaths of which it is capable. If it were to do so, then it would not be able to offer such deep personal accounts of the lives of the deceased and their survivors. As stated before, these deep personal accounts cause viewers to feel connected with the deceased, and they peak the viewers’ curiosities regarding the circumstances surrounding the deaths. This then causes the viewers to buy more newspapers and spend more time watching the news on television. After all, newspapers need to sell their products, and television channels need to maintain their ratings. Therefore, the news media capitalizes on any practice that leads to an increase in its followers. With the exception of the previous example regarding using individual deaths to represent greater societal problems, the news media reduces death to merely a means of making money. If the news media was truly objective and fair (characteristics that give it much of its credibility), then it would attempt to report as many deaths as possible, regardless of the dullness that might result. However, it can also be argued that the reason why reports of personal stories allow the news companies to make more money is that these types of reports are what the public wants. Therefore, if people wish for a few in-depth stories as opposed to many brief overviews, then they are certainly not at a disadvantage with the way in which deaths are currently presented in the news.

Joseph Laura writes that “coverage of a death is a yardstick that varies each day”, and that this variance is a partly a result of the available space for news each day and the amount and importance of each day’s news (Laura, 1984). Nevertheless, there are a number of factors that influence the extent of media coverage that a death receives. These factors include if the person who died was famous or young, if the death was immediate or unexpected, if the death was vivid, if there were strange circumstances surrounding the death, if the death was close “to home”, if a person dies “in the line of duty”, and if the death can be used to represent greater societal problems. Indeed, there is much overlap among these factors, and the extent of media coverage increases when more than one can be applied to a single death. These factors serve as selection guidelines that assist journalists and broadcasters in deciding which of the numerous deaths that occur each day are newsworthy. They ensure that the reported deaths are interesting to the public, which leads to benefits for both the news media and its viewers.

Works Cited

Burgess, E. (2002) The mystery of Flight 427: Inside a crash investigation [Electronic version]. Library Journal 127(5) 94-95

CBS News. (10 January 2002). The Final Count [Online]. Available WWW: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/10/archive/main323918.shtml

Elliot, D., & Lester, P. (2002). Newsworthy death need not be a cliché: coverage in a way that doesn’t necessarily intrude [Electronic version]. News Photographer 57(2) 8-9.

Iyenger, S., & Kinder, D.R. (1987). News That Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Laura, J. (1984, May 26). Is your death newsworthy? Editor & Publisher, p. 14.

Myers, D. G. (2002). Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

National Center for Health Statistics. (2003). National Vital Statistics Reports 52(3)

Signorile, Michelangelo. (1999). Our media-made martyrs [Electronic version]. Advocate 795

Walter, T., Littlewood, J., Pickering, M. (1995). Death in the news: the public invigilation of private emotion [Electronic version]. Sociology 29(4), 579-596.

World Health Organization. (1999). Mortality Database [Online]. Available WWW: http://www3.who.int/whosis/mort/table1_process.cfm

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