Reports of unexpected death to strangers comfort us, paradoxically. By definition, the audience is comprised of those who have survived. An other died. Death passed us by, claiming someone else, perhaps a sacrifice on behalf of the community. We can rest assured for the moment that death is avoidable.
Television brings no ordinary obituaries.
We do not hear about ordinary people dying in the usual ways. If a famous person dies, or an unknown person dies spectacularly, we hear about it. In this way television and the press convey truth but not reality. That is reality but it is not news. As Rank shows with heroes of old, the murder victim achieves a kind of immortality by dying so vividly.