Is it just me or is there someone else who can't understand the logic of the tv content and scheduling?
The British ITV network has just broadcast an unscheduled hour long special about the fact that Madeleine McCann's mother is now a suspect in her disappearance.

Why is this little girl so much more news worthy than the thousands of others who died or were abused today?
If the police have a valid case, why do the tv producers show so many people defending the mother, knowing that they will all have to eat their words if the police are proved correct?
What is the value of changing the schedule when only current viewers will know that it has changed?
There are 24 hour news channels. Are the entertainment programmes on the other channels just broadcast as place fillers until there is a half decent excuse to broadcast news instead?

I expect news broadcasts to present facts and interpretations of facts. I expect fictional drama to be entertaining (and maybe educational). It is becoming difficult to distinguish between news and drama, between fact and fiction. In a half hour programme about road safety, at least 50% of it is distressed people relating their personal tragedy. I feel that I am being manipulated.

There have been several scandals reported about fake winners of phone-in contests. If you add to that the out-take programmes, a cynic might wonder how many times they rehearsed the grieving widow until they got the tears just right. In one out-take they shot the answer to a quiz question at least three times. Is there any truth on the television?

On the Madeline McCann case, IMO the fact that it has gotten so much news coverage shows that people cannot accept a way of operating that is different their own culture.

Sounds like a dozen other cases obsessed over in the U.S., while more important news gets ignored. After all, what's more important, a missing young white female or a hundred war victims?! We seem to have a victim importance scale that goes something like this.

1. Domestic white female child.
2. Domestic white male child.
3. Domestic young white female.
4. Family pets.
5. All other domestic people, with some variation for whiteness, femaleness, youngness, etc.
6. All other foreign folk and domestic animals, with some variation for fuzziness, cuteness, whiteness, femaleness, youngness, etc.
7. Cockroaches.
8. Mulch.

The numbers just indicate relative importance. I don't know the actual point values, but a rating system does apparently exist.

Love the news stories about 100 people dying in a plain crash, and there were 4 Americans.