what he said: journalist and new-media researcher Jeremy Littau...

The choice to shuttle all these resources to Chile does have an impact on what we cover at home. ... Significant resources go to cover whatever shiny object the American consumption class will chase these days. The Chile miners story, while interesting and heart-warming, is really just the flavor of the week, another form of reality TV in the eyes of the business executives making the call of what resources to spend where.

The actual story has zero effect on people in the U.S. with real problems; it’s a wonderful distraction, which would be fine if it was distracting us from coverage of bigger problems at home. But that’s not the reality of this reality TV news story.

...

Let’s cheer for the miners, but let’s not forget that there is suffering here at home and it should get the same, if not more, resource allocation.

The mine rescue may have been riveting TV, but it was not great journalism. Hell, when I was watching the coverage on CNN, Gary Tuchman noted that none of the hundreds of reporters on the scene could get close enough to the actual mine shaft to see what was going on, so they were watching the pool coverage that was coming from close-in. So why were any of them there?

And there’s this, noted by Littau: “Mine Coverage Taxes BBC News Budget.” The upshot:

Among the consequences: only one correspondent will attend a climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, in November and December; and one fewer editor will attend the G-20 summit next month.

Additionally, the BBC will reduce staffing at a planned NATO summit in Lisbon at the end of the year. There would be “much reduced ambition” in the coverage of that summit, Mr. Williams wrote.

Not cool.