From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Brooke Gladstone is out this week. I'm Bob Garfield.

The president went to Russia to negotiate with Putin.

North Korea fired missiles into the sea of Japan.

A central American president was deposed.

Ethnic riots broke out in China.

Congress debated revolutionary changes in health care and energy policy.

Oh, and we're at war in two countries.

But the big story on action news this week, the death of a pop star.

The many images we are tracking today, Forest Wall

Cemetery there in the top, Staples Center,

on the bottom of the screen, people still milling in...

Funny how the same news organizations that have pinched pennies

by closing bureaus and firing reporters

somehow scrounged up the resources

for wall-to-wall coverage of a celebrity funeral.

And why? Because as Henry Luce famously observed, people make news.

And dead people make more news. And dead superstars make even more news.

And dead superstar man-child freaks possibly drugged into oblivion,

well, expense be damned.

It's time to bring in the A-Team,

if, you know, they're up to the emotional challenge.

...