What happened to the Swine Flu? For a couple of weeks, it was all you heard about on local and national news. When there were only a handful of cases here in the U.S., the media was in a frenzy that created a huge amount of fear about a virus that is basically not much different from what we know as the "normal" flu. I know as the mother of a toddler, I was incredibly worried, especially when we had to travel out of state to a wedding. But now that there have been nearly 8,500 cases confirmed worldwide, with almost 5,000 of those in this country, the potential pandemic is lucky to get even a brief mention in the evening news. And what is making it to the headlines? Obama's Notre Dame speech, record heat and record amounts of rain, more negative reports about the economy...let this be a lesson to all of us about the power and influence of the media. There are thousands more cases of swine flu now, and hundreds more deaths, but somehow the story has gone away. And because the story has gone away, so has most of the panic. We tend to assume that the media covers the news, but that is not the case. They decide what they want to cover, and that becomes the news. Meanwhile, busy Americans who tune in to the evening news think they're getting an accurate idea of what's going on in the world when what they are really getting is a picture of the world that the medai wants them to see.