AOG - //It is not a matter of incidents such as this becoming 'entertainment', but it certainly a concern that this change in behaviour is nationwide. //
I think it is very much a matter of incidents like this becoming 'entertainment' - if you degrade something from assault to amusement, you correspondingly minimise the effect of such behaviour, and that is a key to its desensitisation, an increasing problem for society.
//And if so, it is the media's responsibility to report such things, and not to bury them, in the hope that they will go away. //
If the media reported minor spats like this every time they occurred, the news would be full of little else - a sense of perspective has to be employed.
//We all should be asking why this decline in public behaviour and demanding that something is done very soon so as to prevent a complete decline into the abyss of human behaviour. //
There will be no 'decline into the abyss of human behaviour' as your rather floridly express it AOG.
For every numpty like anyone of those, there are ten thousand god honest people living and forming part of the society in which we live.
Inherent human goodness will always ensure that the human race remains as it always has - flawed, but essentially good.