Maybe the death of news isn't about news reporting but about a drought of news

Earlier this morning the thought crosses my mind - In my youth in the sixties and seventies, the world seemed to be much more precarious. There was of course the cold war going on. And the Vietnam war. And there were African droughts. And famine in India. And overpopulation. And countries gaining their independence primarily in Africa with attendant civil wars and genocides. There was pollution and rivers on fire and acid rain. Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Rising challenged from a resurgent Japan. Desertification of west Africa.

The list went on and on.

Nowadays? International news rarely impinges on my daily reading, even when it should.

Is this a real observation?

When I was young we lived overseas and read international papers. International news was highly pertinent. Perhaps the impression is a function of availability bias. Perhaps it is a function of mainstream media having closed down all their international bureaus as being too expensive? Perhaps the news reading public was smaller, more sophisticated, and more demanding?

On the other hand, when was the last civil war comparable to Algeria or Nigeria in the sixties or Angola in the early seventies? Bosnia in the early nineties? Colombia in the early 2000s? The Algerian Civil War in 2002? Sri Lanka in 2009? In the sixties and seventies hundreds of thousands were dying in multiple simultaneous conflicts. Now? Yemen, certainly. Where else? Irag, Syria and Afghanistan? Ten years ago, maybe. Today? Small potatoes. The number of conflicts, internal civil war and external invasions, and the number of fatalities compared to the sixties and seventies seems minuscule today.

When was the last famine to cause more than ten thousand deaths?

When was the last hot fight between any of the major powers?

It sure feels like there are far fewer international events. Of course international news is being made but it tends to be slow emergence stories. The rise of a relatively rich Nigeria is grossly under-covered. Brazil, Indonesia and Bangladesh rarely show up in the news.

All this is good but it sure feels different. I took a look at RealClearWorld today to see what their sampling of stories might reveal.

Click to enlarge.

All this seems pretty quotidian stuff. Thankfully.

I think of the mainstream media death spiral as a function of technology (internet) and economics. And that is certainly a driver. Some attribute to the rise of social media. That is a driver too. Some attribute the decline to news media publishing more (cheap) opinion and less hard (expensive) news. That's a driver too. Some identify fake news and faulty news reporting. Sure, that contributes.

But I have to wonder. What if there is just less of the traditional types of news stories to report? Fewer murders. Fewer wars. Fewer droughts. Fewer obvious environmental catastrophes.

I kind of doubt that but it has to be considered.