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Dean Tony Brannon introduces the newest crop to be researched - hemp.

Media is fascinated by hemp.

The star of the show - a three week old hemp plant.

Television, radio, print all interested in hemp growing.

Like a proud daddy, Murray State Agriculture Dean Tony Brannon stood before a crowd of mixed media to show off his latest plantings of hemp. Standing in an open pavilion on the Murray State ag farm, the Dean explained how the hemp seed had become the newest addition to the program’s farm research.

Sitting just under the microphones and TV cable wires was the star of the press conference. Just shy of two feet tall, the hemp plant was a newborn at just three weeks old. Branham told the press it was growing at a rate of seven inches a week.

About twenty West Kentucky media came to take photos, video tape, and record the event for internet, press and television broadcast. Paducah’s WPSD Channel 6 sent a two person news crew. NPR WKMS had their reporter. MSU media and communications had three people there. The Paducah Sun had a free lance journalist covering the event. The West Kentucky Journal sent their ace old guy with his trusted camera. He captured not only the expert’s remarks, but the images of the media covering the event.

Why all the full over al small acreage of an old crop? he wondered.

Media loves to tease their audiences. Teases secure good ratings and viewership. Most government topics are boring meetings filled with boring complex data and facts that make grown men and women fall out of their seats, asleep.

However, a meeting to show off the cousin to Mary Jane, aka marijuana, is powerful media stuff. As a crop, hemp, the country cousin, was grown in all counties of the Purchase through World War Two. Hemp was a major crop in Hickman County, grown for rope for Navy ships at sea.

Then hemp was painted with the same brush as its cousin and growing was banned. Labeled as an illegal drug, a farmer caught growing it could lose his farm and his livelihood. Hemp is making a comeback. With 10,000 uses for the crop, venture capital funding, state government support and a renewed national security plan for energy independence from Middle East oil, hemp may once again become a legal crop to be grown openly.

So, with film footage and up close photos, the news media editors and publishers can pique the interest of their audiences by showing the live hemp plant, crop photos from the 1930s and ‘40s and modern police efforts to pull up illegal marijuana and hemp plants.

Bottom media line for hemp is that it is sexy. Sin, police, drug busts, vast amounts of cash, guns, and high stake politics all frame the discussion of hemp.

When Kentucky State Auditor recently completed his massive audit of the Jefferson County School System, his story was trumped by the running story of getting seeds to Kentucky through a recalcitrant Washington. For every audit story, the media showed eight hemp stories.

People in West Kentucky were hungry for all the news they could get for the story of hemp beating Washington for its right to grow.

Think of our heritage of moonshine, tobacco and now hemp. The story is colorful. Therefore, it leads the news.