Howdy!

For many years I've been fascinated by the news. More precisely by the items that constitute the news. I have always wondered how it is that a piece of information makes it way to becoming “public information”.

Because all public information systems are managed by people, obviously there is a select group of individuals within those organisations that are responsible for choosing what information they wish to share with the general community.

Even more interesting is the process by which news items are selected and presented.

Obviously, there would be criteria about what is considered important for the community to know or perhaps, more important to capture the attention of the community in taking notice of your product or program.

In other words what percentage of the decision-making is attached to the ‘good of the community’ and what percentage is to the ‘good of the organisation’.

If it is the latter, then to be a successful decision it needs to identify what type of information is likely to ‘catch the attention of the largest portion of our society’.

If this is the basis by which decisions as to ‘news worthiness’ are made, that is, what items are published and what are ignored, then it is to be taken for granted, that it is important to know what people ‘want to know’ and to a large extent ignore ‘what they need to know’.

If this mechanism is, to a greater or lesser extent, existing in all organisations involved in the spread of community information, then this most likely will lead to a self-escalating loop in which the community's perception of the relevant importance of the information, is being grown.

Of course, ‘importance’ is such a subjective term and is predicated upon an individual perception and evaluation. For example: - is it important to be ‘happy’? Or is it important to be ‘safe’? Is it important to enjoy the ‘moment’? or is it important to ‘plan ahead’ and even more crucially I think, is it ‘important’ that the information be ‘a responsible representation of reality’ and not an article with an irresponsible portion of fantasy.

This all brings me to what many would consider to be a macabre fascination with the new’s treatment of death.

Death is all around us and is a remarkably frequent event. Billions, maybe even trillions of organisms die every day, yet it appears to me that there is no other event which invokes a larger emotional response than the presentation of death.

Let's look at a couple of examples news items.

A man died today as a consequence of being attacked by a large shark whilst swimming off Rocky Point beach

Is likely to figure somewhere in the headlines of most national news networks

447 Australians died today as a consequence of being born.

Is a news item you will never ever hear or see but both news items can be factually correct.

Neither will you ever encounter this news item.

447 Australians died today as a consequence of being born, one of which was a man as a consequence of being attacked by a shark whilst swimming off Rocky Point beach.

This puts the information's content in perspective and moves it closer to reality and just like good food - news should contain a blend of all the components that are essential for a healthy community.

It was undoubtedly a horrendous death for the individual and an undoubtedly sad but a common experience for the family's of people who died. And as I may add, a forseable consequence of undoubtedly enjoying, a swim in the ocean. The information provided would have undoubtedly been placed in perspective and that is a very critical outcome, necessary for a healthy community. Plus why is one person's death or a family's grief, more noteworthy than another's?

Lets put life in context.

Below are links to data, extracted from the Australian Bureau of Statistics publication 3303.0 of 27 September 2023.

It covers the categorised mortality of Australians for the period 2013 to 2022.

The link in the Table, provides you with the opportunity to have a look at any of the 20 categories of diseases that are responsible for the 1,635,272 Australians who had their cause of death recorded during that 10-year period.

Plus this site provides you with the opportunity of a search facility for the whole database for any particular disease you may have an interest in.

On average over that period published by the ABS, an Australian died every 3.2 minutes. That's 447 a day, 3130 a week and 89,198 a month. The only thing that for most Australians, maybe excepting Aboriginals, is your chances are smaller than your chance of winning the pools, that you will get a honorary mention by media about the circumstance of your own death.

Set out below you will find for each of the 20 categories, a ranking of the number of Australians that died from each particular categorised disease.

A fact that caught my attention was that of the 1,635,272 Australians that died, 36.5% were from just 10 causes and 86.1% of those deaths where were from just 100 of the 1,689 prescribed causes of death.

I also found it interesting that of the 1,689 prescribed causes of death, 433 (25.6%) were not the cause of even a single death over that 10 year period.

I hope you find the website informative and perhaps a small contribution towards bringing balance and perspective back into the minds of a few Australians and hopefully a little bulwark against the sensationalist inclinations when publically dealing with matter of fact material.

Warren Bolton