There were a couple of fascinating articles in today’s Guardian. Firstly, the cover story of G2 looked at the amount of coverage given to the Space Shuttle explosion in comparison with other stories about peoples’ deaths.
All the US networks carried lots of live stories about the story on Saturday, pre-empting usual programming. I must admit to ignorance about how UK TV handled it as I was out on Saturday. Yet seven children died on a skiing trip in Canada when they were caught in an avalanche. Not as spectacular, but as important. The space programme’s a major part of American life I know, but is the coverage OTT?
The other story also looked at US coverage of the shuttle accident, with Matthew Engle exploring the fact that until the explosion most people didn’t even know the shuttle was in space.
Is it really true that Dubya has never visited Houston, even when he was Governor of Texas?