Compare that to this summer’s preoccupation with Casey Anthony’s trial, or Donald Trump’s mythical presidential bid and suspicions about President Obama’s origins. News execs pretend they can simultaneously pat their heads and rub their stomachs, but the truth is salacious scandal or celebrity conflict overwhelms debt-ceiling fights and Arab Springs again and again.
Major events inevitably pull media -- from screenwriters to news producers -- in certain directions for a period of time. Like the bar in “Cheers,” there's a comfort level -- especially in an age of fragmentation -- in planting a flag where everybody already knows your name.
Those very dynamics, however, are why such shifts will always be temporary and short-lived. Indeed, the only enduring certainty about media remains that works will be copied -- a Hollywood maxim followed as faithfully as any in the Bible or Koran, and thus a means navigating pop culture twists far more reliable than other attempts to divine the public mood.
One can rightfully argue Sept. 11 helped polarize American politics, complicated travel, compelled a debate about security versus privacy, unleashed new apprehensions, and heightened feelings of vulnerability in public spaces. In TV news, it also birthed the 24/7 news crawl on news/talk channels (and remember, Fox News and MSNBC were just five years old when Sept. 11 happened), contributing to the media’s emphasis on urgency without context, as witnessed during the recent storm buffeting the East Coast.
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