Most of us, watching TV from time-to-time, find ourselves saying, “Why’s that made the news? Surely there are more important stories?”  That may well be true so is there a logical way to approach the issue?

Let’s start with a couple of extreme examples, to try to get a feel for this:

• On May 7th this year, the UK went to the polls to elect a new government.  Just about every news programme on radio and TV, as well as the whole Press, led with variants on the ‘story’ “Voters start voting in the General Election”.  But was this actually ‘news’?

• At the other end of the scale, what about the dog that can play the piano? (Or any similar ‘and finally’ space-filler.) Is it worth the space?

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