I will talk about mass media as (almost) always, a bit because it is the matter I know best, but also because, more and more, communication (deemed as the way to bring about information and publicity together) shows to be the nervous system of that big boy, all but wealthy, that the planet is.  
I want to talk about this matter mainly because in September we had confirmation of a data which made a strong impression and has suggested many considerations: at the “stock exchange” of communication the title draws the most is also the most definitive, that is simply the death.  
This is a word I will put inside inverted comma, to give a so private meaning and at the same time so public word immediate semiologic cross-references, here it is: the “death”. Last year it happened the traumatic death of Lady Diana, followed by the death by consumption of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, canonized in life- her own life, I mean -. At the laicism and faith height, two funerals have been translated, in a few days and with different doses but in a tendentially alike way, in the media spectacle of the two funerals, into a pastiche of deep emotions for contrabasses  and violins, for prima donna attitudes and spirituality differently combined.  
I have already written something about that on these pages. And now it is the turn of Lucio Battisti, the most famous and main music artist  of the sixty and seventy, since twenty years rigorously retired, without neither appearing nor becoming manifest, dead of a liver tumour in a trice on the first days of September. Also for him it has been repeated the media “roundabout” of mourning, obviously on the opposite side - but complementary - respect the visibility of Diana (I avoid the references to Mother Teresa, even if the charitable saint is swallowed by the mechanisms of the producing process of the “media death” merchandise the same way the other two).  
The matter I want to reason at is right this 'process'. The question, expressed in the most gross terms are possible, to hold it, could be exactly: why death is sold so well (on newspapers, television, radio, internet), and further more, as I mentioned above, why nowadays it seems to be the “merchandise” that has publicly more appeal on public and masses, more than any other life manifestation (even enclosing sport e cinema)? In brief why , for a communicator, an advertising agent, an information operator, there is nothing better than a “prominent death” (mockery of language) and obviously the following funeral? I would identified first an 'external' reason and an 'internal' one for the planetary scene- even if in the case of Battisti it concerns an Italian “death”, the same holds true-: what is outside, that is what is visible in the (in) civilization of the image, is given by the rituality of the death.