Sometimes Mass Murder Is News and Sometimes It Isn’t
Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2007Did you see this guy’s video on the news?
He was as mad as a bag of spanners. A fruit. A complete nutcase.
I’ve been listening to the coverage since waking up this morning. Every station has it, on radio and tv. The world is shocked and horrified by the mass killings at the university, and quite rightly so.
This guy went out and deliberately killed 31 innocent people as well as taking his own life. Imagine: 31 people whose lives were full of possibilities until a suicidal maniac snuffed them out.
No wonder the world is convulsed with horror. No wonder the radio and television stations are full of it.
********************
Meanwhile, in other news, 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by suicide bombers yesterday.
Not much about it on television.
Stumble it!
April 19th, 2007
Funny that isn’t it? Britain is currently at war thousands of miles to its east where hundreds are dying every day - yet the headlines in Britain for days has been about a place thousands of miles to its west where 33 people died.
Similarly Ireland’s closest neighbour is at war - thousands of miles to its east…etc.
April 19th, 2007
“No wonder the radio and television stations are full of it.“
They’re full of it, all right (says she, bitterly).
I read that the parents at Virginia Tech that came to pick up their kids couldn’t get a hotel or motel room within 2 hours of the campus, due to them being booked up by reporters, TV crews, etc., probably also including the one that wrote the story that I read.
April 20th, 2007
All life is not equal. At least not in the eyes of the press. I’m reminded of the alleged headline in an Aberdeen newspaper after the Titanic sinking.
“Aberdeenshire Man Drowned At Sea”
Yes, it’s apocryphal, but it has it’s roots in parochialism, as does the campus shoot-out.
I’ve stopped bothering about it.
April 20th, 2007
Hey Fat Sparrow,
You are so, so right on…..
The Vultures we call,….The Media.. are just that…winged rats with cameras.
April 20th, 2007
Apparently it’s the last gasp sensationalism of desperate insurgents in a foreign land. They’ve been saying that for four years now. Pretty criminal.
April 20th, 2007
Within two hours of the shootings, NBC, that serious - mind you - news outlet that received the footage and writings, had come up with a full-screen picture of the college “Massacre at Virginia Tech” in huge black letters. Each time they report on it they use this image as a background, and as a segue to and from commercial breaks and even as a logo behind Brian Williams for virtually the whole broadcast.
It was a vicious, stupid, evil thing that was done, 32 times. The bald facts of this do not seem enough for the media who think the story needs still more drama and salacious theatre props; more gruesome by-lines; and hundreds and hundreds of posturing “reporters” at the scene telling us all about what they feel. The news networks seem to be revelling, almost, in a kind of voyeuristic schadenfreude. The clamour to get there first was obscene. It’s news reporting at its most cynical.
Learned men from both parties over here are calling Iraq the worst foreign policy disaster in US history, dwarfing that of Vietnam. To be fair, the media are showing a little more teeth now than when they just rolled over for fear of criticising the policies and being called unpatriotic. But it took a groundswell of public opposition to the war to give them back these teeth. Media here, with a few noteable exceptions - PBS and NPR - is Big Advertising’s bitch.
April 20th, 2007
The full-screen picture of the college was colour-washed red and the word MASSACRE superimposed. I don’t know how I managed to delete that from the last comment.
It’s true it was a massacre but I can’t see how an affected family watching that could be anything other than upset by the salaciousness. But NBC weren’t the worst, They had dripping red over the college on a different channel I flicked past. Fox, no doubt.
April 20th, 2007
Mr Bock (& all)
Get rid of your tellies. You will be happier for it.
April 20th, 2007
Couldn’t agree more Bock.
Here’s another 3,584 Pointless deaths
Link is here
…sure, ’tis all only a few numbers .
April 20th, 2007
Bock I’ve been saying just that to anyone who’ll listen to me and people just shrug and say “I know, it’s terrible” or “The world is gone mad” and so on. I think Eolai is spot on. Lives are not equal. The media reflects societal values. I know it’s creating public opinion for some, which is scary but all the media must not be tarred with the same brush. It saddens me that Iraqi lives are deemed to be worth significantly less than American lives but by whom and why? Innate human parochialism/tribalism? Self serving bias? Politics? It’s vile.
April 20th, 2007
Guys: I deliberately didn’t respond uniquely to your replies.
It seems to me that this particular matter speaks for itself and requires none of my usual smart-ass replies.
April 20th, 2007
D.C. - I got rid of my telly many years ago. Do I have to get rid of my internet access now?
April 21st, 2007
I feel I have to retract earlier comments…cause at some point I felt pity for this guy. Now I think he was just plain bonkers. Even his grandfather called him a bastard and said he was better off dead.
Still, I gotta wonder, how did he fall through 22 years worth of cracks? I don’t think you go this coocoo for cocoa puffs overnight.
NBC is a subsidiary of the company that I work for at the present. I have to say, I’m embarassed by their decision to run something so incredibly irresponsible. I’m sure they were incredibly desperate for a ratings boost, given that no one is out calling someone a “nappy headed ho” or arguing about who fathered Anna’s baby.
Freaking vultures. Can I get a Christian to go with my lion?
April 21st, 2007
Yeah, he’s made the world stop and listen so I’m sure there are many similar nuts thinking the same. Did you hear him on the tape? Sounds like Napoleon Dynamite