Why (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/23/war.deserter.ap/index.html) does the return of 1 individual make the news? He didn't rate a news story when he deserted. I don't care what his character of service was prior to his going AWOL, he is a deserter & deserves a less than honorable discharge from the service.
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LEXINGTON, Kentucky (AP) -- A soldier who fled to Canada two years ago after serving in Iraq said he would return home to face consequences from the U.S. Army.
"I decided that I've got to go back and get this over with once and for all, instead of living in limbo up here forever," Darrell Anderson told the Lexington-Herald Leader for Saturday's edition from Toronto.

Interesting. Yea, it's not really breaking news. There are hundreds of ppl just like him

Yeh, where is the old bearded guy from the backwoods of Canada that does not know the Viet Nam war is over, still hiding.
That would be newsworthy.

This should not be newsworthy!.......Why (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/23/war.deserter.ap/index.html) does the return of 1 individual make the news?

I an trying to figure out what POSSIBLE objection anyone would have to such a story being reported.

For the life of me, I cannot come up with a reason.

I don't have an objection. It's just not very interesting news. It's like putting an article on how a kid had a good day at the park on the front page - people just don't need that kind of news, its not important.

Compared to other things that have been reported, this does qualify as "news."

Fark.com (http://www.fark.com/) chronicles the most bizarre happenings it can find, every day. Everything from gay alligators getting beaten to death with fire hydrants by a Baptist minister to a 300lb woman surviving a skydiving accident.*

* I made those two examples up, but there is bound to be stuff there that is just as bizarre.

I an trying to figure out what POSSIBLE objection anyone would have to such a story being reported.
For the life of me, I cannot come up with a reason.There was another thread about the coverage given to Paris Hilton's DWI. The annoyance was that it was spectacularly irrelevant.
Same with this story.

I don't have an objection. It's just not very interesting news. It's like putting an article on how a kid had a good day at the park on the front page - people just don't need that kind of news, its not important.

You have a point, but if the Media in this country began to report ONLY news items that people actually need to know about, (IOW, if they eschewed hundreds of daily reports on everything from Michael Jackson's plastic surgery to who Paris Hilton is dating to
what the latest fashion trend is in Hollywood) the news Media would no longer be profitable enough to exist.

I for one was following the news a while back and while watching was treated to INNUMERABLE stories concerning a man having alledgedly taken his pregnant wife to a lake and killed her .........and with every telling and re-telling and delving into the most minute details, I would think to myself-- "What the hell does THIS one homicide have to do with the national news?!?!?....what possible interest does this have for ANYONE not directly connected to this family?!?!?....what kind of person finds this murder SO **interesting** that the Media will put it on the front page and on every nightly broadcast?!?!?!"

But, I know that even though I personally could not care LESS about it, and even though a news report on, for instance, the decline of real wages over the past few years should be infinitely more meaningful and important to the viewing Public, I realize that SOME people ---many MILLIONS of people, in fact--- find such pablum utterly irresistable.........THUS, I realize that the Media is going to feed their curiosity and endlessly report on the story.

It's so-called "human nature", I guess, for a certain percentage of the populace to --for some reason-- want to hear all the sordid details about such incidents as murders and rapes even though it has NOTHING whatsoever to do with them.

It seems to me that a story about an Army deserter --even one that is not very interesting-- would be and should be of far more importance to the Public at large than a single murder that took place a thousand miles away from them.........but you see what gets the headlines.

There was another thread about the coverage given to Paris Hilton's DWI. The annoyance was that it was spectacularly irrelevant.
Same with this story.Actually, Decka started that thread because he was upset it received relatively little coverage compared to Mel Gibson's DWI. He saw it as proof of an anti-Christian media, IIRC.