Swine Flu, The News and Priorities

Because of the job that I have, I drive around in my car a lot. And, since I am in my car so much, I have XM Radio to give me a variety of listening choices. This morning I was listening to CNN and they spent, what seemed like, a half hour talking about Swine Flu. I found this interesting, at first, because I had never heard of Swine Flu before and it sounded like this was some sort of big deal the way CNN was reporting it and devoting so much time to it.

Come to find out, there are 8 known cases of Swine Flu in the United States. A couple of these cases are in Texas and the rest are in California.

CNN interviewed Dr. Sanjay Gupta asking him various questions about this version of Flu. Dr. Gupta stated, and I am sumarizing, that the strain of Flu is hard to detect from other strains of Flu and he wasn't sure about treament. Maybe Thera-Flu would work, is what he said.

So, where am I going with this?

Why is CNN spending this much time on something that sounds like, well, the Flu? Don't get me wrong, I am sure that these 8 people are very sick and I hope that they recover. But a 1/2 hour on the FLU?

Why not spend that 1/2 hour talking about how there are an estimated 744,000 people in the United States that are homeless? What if they talked about how the average age of the homeless is 7 years old? What if they talked about how an estimated 13 million children in the US that are going hungry every day?

What if they had talked about how people can go out and help others in need? Think about the impact that could have. But, I guess, helping other people does not get ratings. Putting fear into people, I guess, does. What does that tell you about The News and Priorities?