I think in the modern world, news travels a lot faster than it used to. We now have almost instantaneous news over the internet. We have BBC News channel broadcasting nothing but the news 24/7. In the 80's we had the news at lunchtime, 6 o clock and 9 or 10 o clock (depending on what channel out of 3 you were watching) We now have (almost ) thousands of channels to choose from. My dad tells me that years ago,local news (unless it was a murder) probably didn't make the national press. Nowadays the national press contains snippets of minor news stories from all over the country/world, not just the major news stories.
