Truly, the only media coverage this tragedy warrants is the few minutes it takes to cite the number of casualties (12 dead, 59 wounded); to carry President Obama’s moving expressions of national sorrow; and to assure the public that the gunman was apprehended on the scene in Aurora, Colorado.
Of course, I get that watching this coverage makes gawking at a traffic accident (i.e., rubbernecking) seem like watching paint dry: shooting rampages are a ratings boon.
But no public interest is served by media outlets reporting completely useless information ad nauseam as BREAKING NEWS. And that goes especially for the folly of giving every surviving moviegoer her 15 minutes of fame to give excited, invariably irrelevant eyewitness accounts. Not to mention featuring “friends” the shooter probably never knew he had waxing universal bewilderment about what he did.
Nor, incidentally, is any public interest served by teasing us with the trite debate on gun control which, remarkably enough, only ever results in making more guns more easily available – as this latest shooting will undoubtedly attest.
For, truth be told, with more Americans firing off guns than lighting up cigarettes these days, the wonder is that there aren’t more of these rampages….
I fully support strict gun-control laws. Nevertheless, I am convinced that no laws can prevent these kinds of human tragedies. In fact, incidents like this bring into stark relief the fact that it’s not guns, but insane and troubled people—with motives no one can possibly anticipate or comprehend—who commit mass murders.
(“Massacre at Virginia Tech,” The iPINIONS Journal, April 17, 2007)
Frankly, it does not take long for the media to turn these tragedies into macabre entertainment, providing unwitting or uncaring inducement for some nut to perpetrate the next one:
I don’t know why the media always reward these psychotic people by giving them the fame they covet; that is, by plastering their pathetic mugs all over television and on the front page of every major newspaper … worldwide, and reporting pop psychology about why and how they did their dastardly deeds? Isn’t it clear to see, especially in this age of instant celebrity, why some loser kid would find this route to infamy irresistible?
You’d think that – given the record of these psychotic and vainglorious episodes since Columbine – we would have figured out by now that the best way to discourage them is by focusing our attention on the victims and limiting what we say about the shooter to: May God have mercy on your soul as you burn in hell!
(“Massacre in Omaha,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 7, 2007)
The media in this case are like parents who indulge their kids’ every whim and then wonder why they behave like spoiled brats….
Anyway, just as it made no sense to stop flying after 9/11, it makes no sense to stop going to the cinema today – even to see (Batman) The Dark Knight Rises! (Apropos of making no sense, why do the police always show up after such tragedies brandishing guns that look like hellfire missiles when it’s clear the danger has already passed…?)
But the producers of this movie must be dreading that this tragedy will defy the notion that there’s no such thing as bad publicity – especially given the twittering fools who are already making “I think I’ll wait for the DVD” a trend. However, they should take some consolation in knowing that, within 15 minutes of tweeting this killjoy, these fools will forget all about it and be off to the cinema as if this tragedy in Colorado never happened.
My condolences go out to all of those who have been affected by this senseless rampage.
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