If It Bleeds, It Leads

Lately I’ve been reflecting on the old news rule: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Any story, no matter how interest-worthy, always takes a backseat to another item containing [more] death, carnage, and blood.

For a long time, news of the Ukraine war dominated the news. Then we’d see nothing about it when a mass shooting would happen, and that would be the major story. Suddenly, the attack by Hamas in Israel took center stage—to pause for a while when a mass shooting occurred in Maine. This adds a corollary to the rule: if it bleeds closer to us, it also takes precedence. And metaphorical blood-letting, such as the shark tank of finding a new Speaker of the House, might squeak by with an occasional mention.

All of this is, pardon the expression, old news. We’ve long known how violence, terror, and death surges in the news cycle. But while watching some of these stories, I began to muse (perhaps I should say again, because this is a familiar theme to me) about how humans sometimes cling so desperately to life.

This happens on TV shows as well. Someone seems to be in the direst of straits, and they do their utmost to fight back, to continue to live. If we assemble a hierarchy, at the bottom are those people who, when the police identify themselves, begin to run. I find this rather comic, since they rarely outrun those giving chase. (And I always ask why the police identify themselves so far away from their prey; can’t they get closer and lessen the chase? Although I guess that also lessens the drama.)

At the top of this hierarchy are those who find themselves in a raging gun battle with their enemy. Why don’t they give up before expending lots of ammunition, inflicting more pain and damage and having it also happen to them, and then getting killed in a hopeless standoff? Or why not take their own lives and go out more quickly? (Something I wish mass shooters would do—start with themselves and spare others.)

I posed this question in a short film I made a few years ago. When the zombie apocalypse happens and you are deprived of family and friends, is solitary survival of the utmost importance? Or would it be better to surrender? In some societies, shunning or banishment are the worse punishments. When left isolated by an apocalyptic event, is the struggle for survival at all costs what makes us truly human?