The movie was based on real-life Floyd Collins who in 1925 was trapped in a Kentucky cave drawing so much media attention that it became the third largest media event between the two World Wars (the other two being Lindbergh's solo flight and the Lindbergh kidnapping). In the film, the disaster attracts campers including a real circus. The movie was subsequently re-issued as The Big Carnival, with "carnival" referring to what we now call a "circus". It cynically examines the relationship between the media and the news they report. Media circuses make up the central plot device in the 1951 movie Ace in the Hole about a self-interested reporter who, covering a mine disaster, allows a man to die trapped underground. Reasons for being critical of the media are varied at the core of most criticism is that there may be a significant opportunity cost when other more important news issues get less public attention as a result of coverage of the hyped issue. An early example is from the 1976 book by author Lynn Haney, in which she writes about a romance in which the athlete Chris Evert was involved: "Their courtship, after all, had been a ' media circus.'" A few years later The Washington Post had a similar courtship example in which it reported, " Princess Grace herself is still traumatized by the memory of her own media-circus wedding to Prince Rainier in 1956." The term has become increasingly popular with time since the 1970s. Tonya Harding arriving at Portland International Airport after the 1994 Winter Olympics.Īlthough the idea is older, the term media circus began to appear around the mid-1970s.