Aussie Lucas and Yank Chynna.

One story has dominated the news this week in Australia and, to my knowledge, also Canada: that of the tragic fates of backpacking couple, Australian Lucas Fowler, 23, and American Chynna Deese, 24.

They were shot dead in an attack that also led to the discovery of 64-year-old Leonard Dyck's boyd hundred of kilometres away. This prompted a search for two missing teenage suspects, Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky, (who I won't include photos of because they don't deserve further publicity), who on Wednesday Canadian time, were found dead in the wilderness. There'll be few, if any, tears at their funerals.

But rather than recount the case's details for you here, I want to impartially examine the Australian media's coverage of this dreadful saga. Murder is always murder, but it happens everywhere and every day. Yet when one of the casualties is one of our own, however (in)directly, isn't it interesting how much more newsworthy it becomes as opposed to most other cases?

My heart completely goes out to the Fowler and Deese families, and the media to my mind have done nothing wrong in their coverage of this story. But it simply highlights, for me, a perhaps uncontrollable nationalistic bias (if that's the right word) in mass media that in turn, come to think of it, highlights how subjective newsworthiness can be, and how rarely we may realise that.