You can't find a piece about Paula Deen today because the attention has shifted to Prince George. Which, by the way, is exactly the point: While there are people who care about Snowden, NSA, etc., they are not currently any kind of substantial part of the public. We all ignore that at our peril.
The fact that Snowden may be a larger-than-normal individual news story doesn't change the fact that the story doesn't capture public attention in the face of the multitudes of other news stories continually cropping up and then going away again.
Yes, it is extremely important to note that the majority doesn't care. That also means that there is no way to reign in the NSA by democratic means. But at least the issue is in the open now.
Well, some people may say that U.S. citizens are brainwashed by their media. But that is not true. They choose to listen to the media they listen to, they often pay for it in some form.
There was tons of media coverage about Snowden's revelations, but people chose to ignore it and chose to forget most about it.
Yes, everybody is talking about Snowden, and nobody is talking about the facts he revealed. It's distressing, but IMO not surprising.
People love human-interest stories. You see this all the time. In any news story where there's anything resembling a central figure, the stories will be mostly about that person, not about the overall event.
Combine that with the difficulty of asking hard questions, and you get what we see. The government probably doesn't even have to exert any kind of overt pressure.
So far Snowden hasn't revealed much that wasn't already said by NSA whistleblowers Drake, Binney, et al. Yet most folks had never heard of them or much about the issues they were trying to raise.
Yet Snowden is an international superstar and the substance of his disclosures are, in fact, front page news on a regular basis. If it takes paying some attention to the fact that his girlfriend was a pole dancer, I guess that's OK with me.
While I agree with the general reasoning of the author, I hesitate to agree with its conclusion. Like most of us here on hacker news, I've been following the Snowden/Prism/NSA stories rather religiously and, for the most part, have been very happy with the rather overwhelming coverage here on HN.
But there have been those getting tired of the news; understandably so, the repetitive hum of media coverage these days is enough to infuriate anyone who has the capacity to remember stuff. The author of this article seems to be pretty infuriated at the the public's fascination with Snowden and wants, rather ambitiously in my opinion, the public to shift their attention to the core of the issue.
I'm not sure if the public is capable of maintaining interest in such a passive evil (I guess I probably don't think too highly of the public). I do think, however, that the public is capable of fixating on the Snowden story because it is a rather interesting story. And the longer the public stays fixated on Snowden, the weird guy living in a Russian airport, the longer the NSA's wrongdoings also stay in the public consciousness.
I say, keep the melodrama coming, if only to keep alive the story of injustice to the public. The success of Snowden's whistleblowing (i.e. in terms of tangible impact) may actually rest on it.
And the media has been reporting on that, because that's what matters. It's out of Snowden's hands now, which is why front-page news stories tend to focus less on him and more on actual policy details, and the politics of a reform bill.
The media won't report on a Snowden interview, because as bad a state as U.S journalism is in, they haven't yet stooped so low to confuse celebrity-stalking with actual journalism, and they know to keep them separate.
The HackerNews crowd notwithstanding, it is depressing to report that the average person today is still utterly unaware of the Snowden revelations.
Please tell your barber, sister-in-law, coffee buddy, or next-door neighbor about it. Tell them why it's important.
EDIT: To the comments below that say that the average person knows but doesn't care: I think you've been speaking with significantly better informed people than the average. Really, my experience has been that the average person has never heard the name Snowden, let alone knows about the revelations. (I might even try an informal poll of people I meet up with, and report back.) That they might not care once they hear the story is a sad, but separate issue.
As negative as the press may seem from this little corner of the internet, I don't think the issue of NSA surveillance has made much of a ripple in the U.S. yet. The turnout for protests on the fourth was abysmal. People are still using Facebook and Gmail as if nothing has happened. Snowden only remains in the news because he is still free. If he had turned himself in on day 1 he'd have disappeared into some black judicial hole and the story he broke would now be long forgotten instead of merely ignored. If I were Snowden, I'd be seriously wondering if U.S. citizens are worth the trouble.
I hate to break this to you, but the majority of people no longer remember the name Snowden. Give it 6 months and this will be such old news that you'll sound like a nut trying to get the majority of people to care about it.
The window of opportunity is short, and closing every day.
To back that up from across the pond: the PRISM/Snowden story has been major news in the UK. Zimmerman was headline news, but only for a day or two, and I don't know who Paula Deen is.
The average person doesn't care about government snooping. They have a million other worries in their life. Sure, they might watch the news and see a new report on a Snowden leak, but they probably don't feel very strongly about it one way or the other, and so they'll just ignore and go on with their daily life.
Probably because these are mainstream news station and most people still don't know who Snowden is. And here's the kicker: they don't care who Snowden is or what he has to say. They just don't. It's a big deal for us, but it's an issue that has yet to surpass the unemployment rate and the declining economy as the chief concern for most Americans.
I'm not sure why Snowden feels vindicated due to the story not going in and out of the news cycle quickly. The average person does not care, something evident from the complete lack of constant mass protests nationwide (to give an example). On the flip side, Oliver is correct, we can't have the necessary conversations if no one really understands what happened, and the scope of it.
Snowden's continued media presence is advancing his cause.
For common people to care, we need a victim. A victim creates a story that the media can report on. The moment we lose our victim, people stop caring. Discussions on what the fourth amendments mean will not capture the hearts of the people for a month or half a year to make changes possible.
For example: If you want to rally the gov to legislate a law to make people to seat belt on buses. Discussion of scientific reports or statistics of seat belts in the press will not go very far. In contrast, a story about a 5 year old that lost both her leg will go a long way.
Agreed. Public interest is a very difficult to define - Snowden vs Celebrate gossip etc. I was being looking for a distraction and was doing a bit of a thought experiment :)
People who are aware (of the danger) generally do care. But most aren't aware, or were charmed into a slumber by the lack of response by the previous administration. That is, it can't be a big deal, BHO didn't say it was, so it can't be.
Remind any Democrat about Snowden and they're likely to give you a blank stare. It's as if it never happened.
That isn't true. Part of what makes the Snowden story so significant is that a huge, huge number of people do know who he is and (at least very generally) what he did and why he is being hunted by the USA.
I don't think anybody has the numbers, but I'd bet close to one in ten adult humans alive today know who he is. Certainly hundreds of millions have heard of him, at least; the story's been on prime time TV and prominently positioned in textual news sources across Japan, Europe, Canada, and most of the democratic world, and also in totalitarian states like China and Russia.
The fact that Snowden may be a larger-than-normal individual news story doesn't change the fact that the story doesn't capture public attention in the face of the multitudes of other news stories continually cropping up and then going away again.
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