Why, with more people directly endangered, was this kind of reporting absent? It wasn't as if a powerful government had banned such information.   And it certainly wasn't that the media were acting out of a responsible desire not to inflame the populace.

Ultimately, it was just a matter of what our local media found gripping.

To them, the task of disseminating the mundane facts of what we might encounter if we ventured out for a quart of milk in a particular neighborhood could not compare with the excitement of being at the core of the media action—of jostling with the out-of-town "big boys" to be the ones promulgating the compelling images that would captivate national and international attention.