Ace In The Hole

Ace in the Hole is a fantastic film about one journalist's determination to extend a story as far as it can go. He does this with the purpose of getting back on top of the newspaper game. Unfortunately his actions cause the death of the protagonist of his article. I believe that director Billy Wilder was saying something about the power of media influence in this film. That the media can significantly influence the outcome of a story. For Kirk Douglas in Ace in the Hole, it was the creation of a media firestorm that resulted in a tent city. I know that the media has a great potential for doing good, alerting the public to an important situation, but I wanted to see if there was any case where media overexposure worked badly. A recent story that came to mind for me was the issue of Obama's birth certificate. It was proven long ago that Obama had a birth certificate, he was born in the U.S. and he has every right to be the president since he was elected democratically. But, even so, many people cried out for his birth certificate, especially Donald Trump. Every news channel picked up the controversy, but there was no controversy. It was already proven that Obama had it, but the firestorm forced him to release a long form birth certificate anyways. Should the media have covered what many consider a non-story? I feel like this overexposure may have actually led more people into believing there was no birth certificate. I know that this is not as dramatic as a man's death like in Ace in the Hole, but it shows how overexposed some things can get. It is a tricky area for networks to balance what is important and what is too frivolous to really matter.