A cough. A sneeze. God forbid a tissue is in order.  During a memorial service for 9/11 on Sunday in New York Hillary Clinton did what some consider despicable for a presidential candidate: she got sick.

According to the Washington Post, Clinton had a “dizzy spell and pneumonia diagnosis.” Democrats and Republicans criticized Clinton for not addressing her departure from the ceremony because of to her illness. Her campaign said they will release medical records concerning the diagnosis this week. Seems like enough explanation to me.

Except the media can’t stop talking about it. Journalists and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum just can’t seem to accept that the first woman to be nominated on the Democratic ticket for president could get sick, as anyone could. 

The explosion of the 24-hour media in the past decade is undeniable — we’re notified anytime a public figure eats a sandwich or blows their nose — and the focus on Clinton’s illness illustrates the effects of such exposure.  

Why isn’t anyone talking about the cruise ship that crashed into a bridge in southern Germany, killing two crew members? Or the firefighter who climbed a 110 flights on a stair master in full gear to honor those who died on 9/11?

Instead, CBS released an article that Clinton’s “scare highlights her transparency problem.”  I’m not here to argue Clinton’s transparency and email issues.  I’m arguing for the sake of news — hard-hitting, gut-wrenching, raw news that our society has lost touch with.  

We live in a world where we hear about what the Kardashians ate for breakfast before we hear about strife in the Middle East. This not only discredits legitimate news sources, but it weakens society’s perception of which issues merit top priority in our country.

I don’t care if Hillary Clinton has pneumonia or if Donald Trump catches the flu — these illnesses are rarely life-threatening in the United States today. What I do care about is their positons on issues, their interaction with others and their work ethic. According to CBS News Political Director John Dickerson, “there will be a lot of questions about, ‘let’s see her full medical records’” in the future. Medical records should not be one’s basis for voting for a presidential candidate and the media’s skewed news coverage distorts this fact.  

But we are not the national media — we are faculty, staff and students. We cannot decide what the media will show us but we can decide what we pay attention to. If we seek out the news that affects us, that matters to us, hopefully the media will provide it.