I dont think it's a culture of death either. It's just part of the culture of television. Television news has a way of creating feedback loops that exaggerate the "importance" of certain events way beyond the levels at which those same events would have been perceived in the pre-television age. It's not about a major increase in human ghoulishness. It's about television intentionally exaggerating events to sell more laundry detergent. If the television news people keep telling their watchers that the death of an eighty-plus-year-old man, or of a woman who has had no higher brain functions for fifteen years, or of an ex-football player's ex-wife is a major news story, they'll eventually believe it. And once they believe it, they'll keep tuning in to see and hear more about it because, after all, it's really important, isn't it?