In short, only what is of local interest is news, and the media decide what is of local interest. What skews things is that these same media have pretensions to being modern and universal. I wish our journalists would realize just how parochial they are. The news of the recent brain-dead organ donor is about as significant as the news that the first child from one's village has been admitted to the University of Tokyo. I used to think newspaper and TV journalists were modern men and women, but the way the recent organ donation was covered shattered that illusion.
Journalists still have a village mentality.
I am not saying there is anything wrong with villages. Country hicks were masquerading as city slickers. It has ever been thus. Japan has been urbanized, but people's minds remain in the country. As I have already said, Japanese society has long disputed the issue of organ transplants from brain-dead donors.