Newsworthiness

I have with me today, a copy of yesterday’s Star newspaper. In print. And I don’t quite understand the logic behind their arranging the news articles the way they did.

On page N3, which is basically the first page behind the cover, is THIS piece of news about two Malaysian Muslim artistes pleading not guilty to khalwat.

On page N26, is THIS piece of news about the Altantuya murder case, where Azilah says he had no reason to kill her, and saying that it would have been a “stupid job”.

Comparing the two, there are several similarities. For one, they are both court cases. Both are pleading “not guilty”. And both are news involving Malaysians.

But somehow or other, the good people in the Star have decided that the news about two artistes being charged for close proximity is worthy of being on the 3rd page of the newspaper, whereas news about someone pleading not guilty to a murder charge is only worthy for a position in the 26th page.

Could it be that nowadays, we are more interested in whether a couple of artistes committed khalwat than we are in whether someone committed murder (and of the most brutal kind)?

Could it be that we (or our media) have our priorities the other way around?

Or maybe, I could be all wrong, and it actually doesn’t matter which page a news article is on, as long as it’s in there?

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