Porter Article

The Kent State example in Porter's piece really spoke to me. It irritates the hell out of me when American deaths are emphasized in Middle Eastern terrorist bombings or, just the other day, when a veteran was injured in the Occupy Oakland riots, the media made a big fuss about it. I think American and veteran affairs are important, but in those situations they are trees in a forest of issues. Porter explains the choice of words in the Kent State article as a product of a discourse between writers and readers. In other words, the New York Times journalist chose to emphasize women's deaths because those are the types of details the majority of the readers are looking for. Apparently, I don't fit in to the mainstream discourse community, but that of the Onion and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

I say that, and yet I wonder if there is a sizable portion of silent readers that have no discernible influence on the media. You could call them the "apathetic silent majority" or something. There seems to be people really immersed into the "fox news discourse" and the "generic left wing discourse", but there still seems to be a lot of people that enjoy neither. Where are the writers for these readers? Are neutral news outlets non-existent because neutral readers wouldn't buy newspapers anyway? Is that why the Daily Show and the Onion are only popular in free formats on the internet and late hours of the night?