And hey, Di's death was YEARS ago. How do you stay preoccupied with that all this time, robo?????? How do you logically string it together with recent events as a "trend"?
I think it's actually funny how MSN, CNN et al got stuck trying to bring us "breaking news" instantaneously, on things that HAD to take more than a newsbyte of realtime. Thinking these deaths might occur at any moment, they were so eager to scoop each other on "the Death Announcement" that they got suckered into weeks of talking-head experts' fees. Eventually they actually started to provide some more in-depth analysis, background, etc., just to fill the "Continuing Coverage" hours they'd landed themselves with! In the end, they actually broke down and gave us stuff we could THINK about. Even more ironic, the best of the coverage only made me want to READ about the issues, in more depth. And the commercials they ran to pay for it all? I saw very few-- since they provided time to do chores, check Mudcat, learn new songs, and so forth.
Really, the trend started with war coverage-- shuttle explosions-- WTC collapsing.... it isn't even celebs people get glued onto, but "Continuing Coverage of Breaking Urgent News."
Culture of death? Not so much as Culture of Fear-Mongering. ANd that's OLD news.