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Topic: Idiot Media Glorifies Yet Another Mass Murderer
| Author | Message |
| keltoi2 | Posted – 12/6/2007 12:31:27 PM | show profile The idiot mass media has struck again. Some screwed up teen with an automatic rifle blows away a bunch of innocent people Christmas shopping in Omaha and leaves a note that says, in part, "Now I'm gonna be famous." And what the hell does the media do?!? Makes him FREAKING FAMOUS! The media is feeding the next loser with a gun EVERY TIME it puts the name, history, and gripes of every whack job who goes on a rampage. Some of that blood in Omaha is on the media's hands. |
| reporterwriter | Posted – 12/6/2007 5:33:38 PM | show profile >>The media is feeding the next loser with a gun EVERY TIME it puts the name, history, and gripes of every whack job who goes on a rampage.<< Media also try to help people make sense of senseless acts of violence, honor the victims and those who grieve, and raise awareness so people stop kids headed down the same path. Over here in my bubble, if not for the last point alone, we'd have had a few more Columbines and Virginia Techs. |
| keltoi2 | Posted – 12/6/2007 5:59:42 PM | show profile I disagree. I think this is vulture journalism: the corpses and blood are out, the media flocks. I can take my Magic 8 Ball and tell exactly how the media will play this out: Teevee anchors Ken Coiffed and Barbie Boobjob will put on their somber faces and take it live to the scene, where we'll zoom in on grieving friends and neighbors, hear about how he was "a loner without friends...very quiet" but that there were "signs", we'll get 45 seconds with a psychologist pseudo-expert talking about how loner teenagers sometimes go off-kilter, then back to the studio where Barbie will turn to Ken and say "How very sad. And during the holidays." And Ken will shake his head and say, "A real tragedy. Now to sports." Then will follow days of funerals with zomm shots of grieving family and friends. And the point is, it IS a real tragedy for all those grieving families. They don't need a media circus to share their grief with them. And every sociopath is a sociopath for his (or her) own very special reasons of some combination of screwed up childhood, lousy parents, chemical inbalance, and lousy life. There is nothing to learn from finding out that John Doe was screwed up in his own special way. We know that already. But what the media deluge DOES do is tell some other socipaths out there that, although they may never amount to anything in their own lives, WE WILL GIVE YOU IMMORTALITY if you take the lives of others. |
| catlondon | Posted – 12/6/2007 6:04:44 PM | show profile Devil's Advocate And yet if they didn't cover it extensively, people would accuse the media and America of not caring about what happens in the heartland. That if this had taken place in, say, California, there would be extensive coverage. While I agree the media will certainly go overboard, I think there's also a tendency in the United States these days to equate media coverage with respect. |
| keltoi2 | Posted – 12/6/2007 6:08:25 PM | show profile I think letting people grieve in peace without satellite trucks filling the streets in front of the churchs and funeral homes is a greater sign of respect. |
| catlondon | Posted – 12/6/2007 6:37:16 PM | show profile Keltoi: I agree. That's how I would do it. But I've seen too many grieving family members line up in front of cameras soon after a tragedy to believe that's how others feel. Years ago, my boss lost his daughter in the Pan Am Flight 103 explosion. Her family went into seclusion right away. However, another girl's mother was on the local news the very night after receiving the news and continued to give interviews and talk about her daughter to the media until the story died down. I try not judge what people need to work their way through a family tragedy or how they choose to grieve, but I did it make clear to my family that should I die in a noteworthy way, I did not want to look down from Above and see them chatting it up with Ann Curry. |
| keltoi2 | Posted – 12/6/2007 6:53:24 PM | show profile I'm with you on that, cat. But the fact that celebrity culture applies to massacres and funerals is a sad reflection on society. And I think I would punch out the first reporter to stick a mike in my face and ask "How do you feel?" if I lost a loved one. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 12/6/2007 7:07:33 PM | show profile I wish there was a way we could keep the identify of these sick people out of public view so that the sick motivation "to become famous" doesn't drive these people to do such things. But I just don't think it's possible. |
| keltoi | Posted – 12/7/2007 12:52:18 AM | show profile It would be possible if the media in this country was less voyeuristic and sensational and more responsible. But since that'll never happen, I'm afraid you're right, Ugo. And we'll have more sociopaths killing to get famous. |
| pamelabeth | Posted – 12/7/2007 1:55:41 AM | show profile for what it's worth... ...the image of the kid's sad face has stayed in my mind, but i have no recollection of what his name is/was. if someone mentions it to me in a year or even six months, i probably won't think i've ever heard the name before. his story is "famous" to me--we've all heard it before, tragically, quite a few times. his sad face is memorable. but his name? to me, not. |
| writesonwater | Posted – 12/7/2007 4:35:02 AM | show profile If the details weren't made public, I think there'd be an uproar and accusations of witholding public info, ad nauseum. re: "I'm with you on that, cat. But the fact that celebrity culture applies to massacres and funerals is a sad reflection on society. And I think I would punch out the first reporter to stick a mike in my face and ask "How do you feel?" if I lost a loved one." As a young reporter for a local mid-size daily, I covered a horrific, tragic accident that caused national media to swoop in. Just before the local hospital exec ushered him in to the presence of survivors while declining us locals who were in the same waiting room, a major TV reporter said to me, "Big story, huh?" (I used to recall this as "Great story, huh?" but I think that memory must be a mistake because that would be callous beyond comprehension.) I told him I'd rather be writing about anything else, because I was from there and I wished it hadn't happened, and it was't a "great story." At a memorial that evening, national news crews with their lights and boom mics descended like Hitchcock's The Birds on survivors and the families of survivors and of the dead. These people were in shock. THeir eyes were dull, they were practically catatonic with grief. I recall this question most of all: ""How do you feel?" |
| chucho | Posted – 12/7/2007 9:57:48 AM | show profile What woudl you suggest is the appropriate coverage? I'm confused. If excessive coverage of a killer is enough to encourage others to copy the deed, then this culture is truly beyond redemption. |
| keltoi2 | Posted – 12/7/2007 11:10:44 AM | show profile Appropriate coverage would be reporting the incident (and no, not leading with it or giving it a week's worth of coverage), reporting the names of the victims (preferably with the families' permission), giving a receptive ear and outlet to any victim's family who does want to explain who they lost by this horror, and never, ever mentioning the name or showing the face of the killer. They don't deserve fame, even if it is infamy. |
| chucho | Posted – 12/7/2007 1:10:28 PM | show profile >> and never, ever mentioning the name or showing the face of the killer. << So you're for media making a principled stance by withholding information? I'm not confortable with that kind of advocacy from an industry that is supposed to be about objectivity and transparency. And no that doesn't mean I'm defending a constant and incessant news cycle -- if you don't like that don't watch television cable news. What I am uncomfortable with is your proposal to withhold facts in a case in order for media to play an advocacy role -- in this case being an advocate for the point of view that providing the names or pictures of a shopping mall gunman is tantamount to celebrating him, possibly even causing copycat crimes. No way, Jose. I want the name and I want the picture. I do not want the media to censor that for some arguable social benefit. |
| keltoi2 | Posted – 12/7/2007 1:18:28 PM | show profile The media withholds information all the time, and often on issues of much greater importance to the American people. So I don't buy the "I need to know the life history of America's latest psychokiller" as a valid need-to-know. |
| reporterwriter | Posted – 12/7/2007 11:52:09 PM | show profile >>The media withholds information all the time, and often on issues of much greater importance to the American people.<< Example? Also, just a comment, but I get the distinct impression that civics classes no longer teach the role of the press in a free society. I take it you don't work in media, keltoi2? You just blast its purpose, principles, challenges and operation? |
| keltoi | Posted – 12/8/2007 1:32:23 AM | show profile Been in publishing for 25 years now, belinda, the past 20 as an editor. First consumer mags, now medical. How long have you been an editor? You ask for a few examples, so, off the top of my head: In all the talk of the Social Security crisis, I have yet to hear of the MSM focus on the fact that the SS tax freezes at an income of $92K. That means the hedge fund manager who just took down a few hundred million pays as much SS tax as the local cop and his schoolteacher wife. Remove that cap, and you've solved the SS crisis. But the media doesn't tell you that. Iraq is overflowing with examples, but here are a few. In the run-up to the attack in 2003, there was plenty of credible information that the threat posed by Saddam was slim at most, but you wouldn't have known it with all the war drums beating in our MSM. The war was a lie from the start, and the MSM knew it but most were either on the propaganda bandwagon with gusto or too cowardly to tell. More than $500 billion of taxpayer cash has been dumped down the black hole that is Iraq. Has any MSM outlet ever given a complete accounting of where all that money went? Has any even tried? Right now a monstrosity of a US Embassy--the size of Vatican City--is going up, badly, in Baghdad. After years of being ignored, a few MSM outlets are belatedly talking of cost overruns and shoddy workmanship. I have yet to see even a single discussion of why the US has spent years building the biggest embassy in the history of the world for a country with a population with 8 million fewer people than the state of California. A country that for years the Bush crowd repeatedly claimed it had no proprietary interest in? Speaking of, for the past few years, the US has also been building about a dozen or so permanent military bases in Iraq. But you wouldn't know it from the MSM. So why has the US been building permanent military bases for years in a country BushCo claimed it had no intention of staying permanently in until this month? Then you have the PSAs--profit-sharing agreements, as they're called. They're a little sweetheart deal forced on the Iraqis at gunpoint by the US that basically says US oil companies get the rights to extracting Iraq's oil PLUS an obscene percentage of the profits FOR THE NEXT 30 YEARS. Whatever happened to the Republican belief in free markets and all-American capitalism? The MSM still ain't touching that one with a 10-foot dipstick. The world knew in 2003 that Bush invaded Iraq for oil and a US military platform in the Middle East. The only people on the planet who didn't know that then or now are the Americans, and yes, I blame the MSM for that. And the worst thing about it? BushCo's Iraq grab has energized fundamentalist terrorism around the globe far beyond what it was in 2003, or 2001. And a watchdog media that actually did its job could have prevented that, but it didn't. So we are all less safe, not more, because the MSM let us down. |
| chucho | Posted – 12/8/2007 5:49:24 AM | show profile Define MSM, please. (I know what the acronym means.) My point is thta of course you won't get nay depth watching FNS, CNN or reading 90% of what's in USA Today. But I have read articles that have mentioned the SS tax cap and there WERE articles questioning pre-Iraq intelligence at the time. (I recommend watching Frontline's brilliant series on news reporting that came out last year and is in the website to watch for free for a roundup of who was reporting the faulty intelligence stuff.) The problem isn't some vast media conspiracy to keep you from knowing that people who make more than $92K don't pay social security; the problem is there is a lot of bad media. It's up to the individual to find this stuff out for themselves. I don't buy the old left argument that if we only reformed the media than "the people" would magically turn into a nation of progressives. The problem is the people themselves, and no amount of social engineering (in this case, more in-depth media) is going to change the people's plebeians desire to consume bad media. If the society chooses not to be enlightened or curious then tweaking the media isn't going to help it. |
| Printingman | Posted – 12/8/2007 11:20:18 AM | show profile | email poster I didn't notice I was too busy masterbating to Deborah Lefabve |
| Stanley_Milgram | Posted – 12/8/2007 2:45:17 PM | show profile Is there a more tired discussion topic in the world of media than the one surrounding whether the names of assassins, serial killers and other perpetrators of the overly heinous should be publicized? I'm trying to think of one, but I'm drawing a blank. Can anybody help? |
| reporterwriter | Posted – 12/8/2007 6:33:47 PM | show profile keltoi, maybe you've been working too hard to keep up with media (it's plural, BTW), because I've seen reporting on absolutely everything you mentioned. Maybe you're taking your alleged news from the wrong places. And, yes, Stanley, this discussion is as old as time. |
| Sam Waynewright | Posted – 12/9/2007 10:23:31 AM | show profile Idiot media You can blame the media all you want, or not, for reporting too much, or not enough, of yet another insane person mowing down innocent people with automatic weapons. But you've all completely missed the bloody point, which is the twisted and sick gun culture that has grown up in this country, a culure that is unlike that of any other civilized place on Earth. People in the rest of the globe think we Americans are incredably stupid to allow a small minority -- the gunlovers- to allow deadly weapons to be sold to virtuall anyone who has $40 (the retail price of a hand-gun of sale in Washington DC) and can walk upright. If you delete the gun from this latest mass murder and the gun used in the Virginia Tech murder spree, all you would have is a very small item in the local newspapers about a mentally ill person being taken to a hospital for examination, after chasing people with a rolled up newspaper or pepper spray. Focus on the real problem people. SW |
