To me, it appears that the modern epidemic of equating live TV coverage where reporters blabber inconsequrentialities with an event being in the news is the cause for the feeling that the article espouses. Doesn't a 60 second mention about an event suffice? The larger point is, how does this 'coverage' really help the cause? Surely, reporting a disaster, with brief visuals, will alert the volunteers to do their bit for humanity, but showing private human emotions for days and days is something I never understood. It can't be anything but politically motivated propaganda. It also smacks of commodification of victims for a sort of depraved entertainment value. I often feel that a disaster that suits a tv station's agenda is a relief to them because they don't have to worry about programming and can simply milk it till they get bored.
One could argue, correctly, that when an event is reported only briefly on tv it doesn't remain in people's memory. This is where I favor newspapers to tv news. Although there is still a bias here too - an event being reported on front page, with pics etc, or in the fifth page column 2, or nowhere at all - it is relatively indelible. The cliched Hollywood character that pins newspaper clippings to remember an event sort of corroborates what I am saying.
That said, I must say that I am not a fan of all these award winning gut wrenching pictures of human tragedies because I refuse to believe that the photographer is not manipulating. News via visual media is always less trustworthy to me than news via written word. Atleast with the latter, we can sense the tone, inclinations, sophistry etc which is extremely hard with visual medium. For instance, every documentary looks manipulative to me, so I never value news disseminated via visual medium, except for some events like Hindenberg disaster, Tsunamis etc which can't be described in words.