Missing the Forest for the Trees

Maybe it's because, if they were trees, the buildings in New York would be the redwoods of our American urban forest. Whatever the reason, the media, for all its vaunted globalism, still betrays at times an appalling inability to discern what is important to the public it serves.
The latest example (or the one that stuck out to this observer) was last Tuesday, when the major network news programs led with a story that must have seemed a no-brainer to them. Because of a transit strike, some seven million New Yorkers had to find a way to and from work other than public transportation. That's a lot of stranded commuters, no question -- more than the populations of several Western states combined, as NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams reminded us.
The problem with this lead, though, was obvious. As disrupted as the day was in Gotham, no one outside of the Big Apple cared at all. It didn't affect them a bit. And it's disingenuous to suggest that the numbers justified the placement. If some major transportation snafu had caused headaches for seven million commuters anywhere else, it would have been a story, but the LEAD story? Nah. This was the lead story precisely because the major media outlets were located in New York, and it disrupted THEIR day.
It's like watching the world of a child. A small child's world extends only as far as he can reach, which is why it's all about him. Nobody else matters, and that's why it's so monumentally important when another child steals his ball. Stop the presses! That was MY BALL and someone took it!
News decisions are supposed to be made differently, and often they are. But leading the nation's premier newscasts with stories about one city's transit nightmare is one more reminder that fairness is not what rules in the nation's newsrooms. Most outlets normally do a good job of weighing the stories of the day and presenting them in some general order of importance. But not always.
So don't let that stop you from being vigilant about how (and where) your story is presented. These are humans making these decisions, and hey, maybe you didn't understand. That was MY BALL!