Saw a probably clickbait title “Mishaps overshadow message at the Republican National Convention.” It got me thinking that this is probably another case of media attention hyperbole.

The media fixation story I recall was several years ago about child kidnappings. Every week it made national headlines about a child who disappeared or was taken by a parent. The amount of the occurrences had not significantly changed, but people were fooled into thinking that somehow there was an epidemic of kidnappings. Similarly, there was a summer where the media was all over every shark sighting, making it seem like there was a War On Humans by the shark community. Again, the numbers of attacks was about normal, it was just the attention that caused it to seem worse.

Right now, the fixation seems to be on the presidential election. Donald Trump especially draws the attention due to his “Don’t Care” attitude about everyone and everything. He makes a mistake which gets reported and then error corrects which also gets reported.

Which brings me back to the convention. Normally the convention gets some coverage. But, it feels like everyone is more invested in this one than normal. The Stop Trump campaign had a last ditch effort to block his nomination that was almost certainly going to fail, so I suspect some of the coverage was in hopes they might somehow make it more dramatic. But, all these news people have to justify the expense of sending them by coming up with… well… something. So mishaps that would be considered normal and maybe barely mentioned are all of a sudden “Yuuuuge!” It is okay, people. The Democratic National Convention will have its share of mishaps. I am sure the Don will make sure the media is aware of them so they get equal attention.