Some thoughts inspired by a discussion in IRC last night and reading this post by Johnny in the Virginia shooting thread:
Quote:
Originally posted by johnny:
You know what also has a lot of violence in it? Watching the news every day.
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The vicious circle I refer to in the thread's title is that in my opinion because the medias report a lot about violence, even more violence happens. I mean, would those bloke over in Iraq bother to blow themselves up if all they got was 10 seconds or a paragraph in the local newspaper? No, they need their media coverage, it is the way they put pressure where they want to put it.
Another example, which comes to mind is the infamous Varg Vikernes of church-burning fame. All the while during his trial newspapers reported a lot on him, sparking copycat crimes, and then strangely when he was locked in and juicy news material disappeared, church burnings also died down in Norway.
Of course, news stations won't report about Mr. Jack Average taking his car safely back home from work and having a tasty lunch prepared by his loving wife, but seriously, the sensationalist coverage of news has gone overboard, and so has the reaction of people to it...I'm going to spark debate and possibly shock some with what I'm going to say in the next sentence, but hey, that's the objective of this post. If you don't know the people dying, be it during 9/11, the London subway bombings, a civil war in Africa, a school shooting or famine in a poor state, then why should you care about them? You don't lose sleep over the many famine and war related deaths in Africa/Asia, why should you care about deaths that get front page news coverage? Because they happened in a civilised country or because the media carries the very strong message of a few personal tragedies catapulted into a sensational news story, which fills every major news source's front page?
No disrespect to the victims of the tragedies mentioned, nor the most recent one, but seriously...what's with elevating the personal grief of a few dozen to the level of millions?
Just some food for thought...