My friend Moon draws attention to CNN's odd choice of news suggesting that just possibly there might be more important events in the world than those covered by CNN. A couple of hours after he makes his comment this is the key section of the CNN homepage:
And here, for contrast, is the Yahoo News page at approximately the same time:
While Yahoo also leads with the Schaivo story it has lots and lots of other news items in easy clicking distance including (shock horror) some news about places OUTSIDE THE USA.
Then there is Google news
Again the Schiavo story is top - because there are 4000+ stories on it, but on the other hand the Minnesota shooting gets almost equal billing and again we see that a non US story is prominently displayed as is the story about the Florida paedophile.
Just to add to the mix - at the time of writing ABC news has Schiavo ahead of anything else with the Michael Jackson and Robert Blake also getting top billing. CBS news gets the Minnesota shooting ahead of schiavo but it is otherwise full of non news stories sich as "Tabloid Atones For Jackpot Booboo" and "Caught On Tape: Runaway Truck", however NBC does better with the Minnesota killing ahead and plenty of international stories clearly listed. Fox News, gives the two stories roughly equal space and prominence (like google) and also has a selection of other domestic and international stories readily available.
But it is perhaps relevant to compare and contrast - I can't be bothered to cut and paste either BBC's UK front page or its international one but I note that in the domestic one it has plenty of international stories and in the international one it has the school shooting ahead of the Schiavo case and also has lots of other stories that don't seem to appeatr on any of the main US TV news networks.When people in the Media claim that Americans are uneducated about places outside the US and that they are excessively sentimental blah blah blah then perhaps they should take a look in the mirror.