"Seems that this subject has been driven off the front pages by Michael Jackson's death!

... it's a dramatic demonstration of the ephemeral and basically moronic nature of our mass media, isn't it?"

This abuse of the airwaves simply makes it clear how bad our Western news media are.

They are this bad all the time but it takes a special event like this to make the shortcomings obvious.

It is also painfully obvious when a reporter is trying to deal with anything in science.