Look at the image below and tell me whether this is excessive news reporting or not:
This horrifically thorough graphic neatly sums up the current state our news media is in.
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point in our country, we began to confuse being informed with being entertained. We’ve turned school violence into a fetish, picking apart every minute detail, like these tragedies are movies instead of reality. I gotta ask, who thinks we really need to know details like where the victims were wounded!?
The problem isn’t so much that it would be wrong to know these things. The problem is that we believe we need to know these things. How does having explicit knowledge of how innocent people were killed and wounded benefit us in any way, shape, or form? It doesn’t. It only satiates that carnal desire that we all have for violence. It’s entertainment, pure and simple - no more beneficial to us than watching the new Rambo or Die Hard movies. We’ve manifested a mutant hybrid, called Infotainment, that has taken the place of real journalism in our country. And apparently, it has happened without anyone realizing it. This has to stop.
What do you think? I am the only one who believes this image is sickening and disrespectful to the victims, and harmful to our country? Please, leave me a comment with your thoughts.
Check out my previous post for more on my opinion on this subject.
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14 users commented in " Media’s Coverage of School Violence Borders on Fetish "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackWhen the news media covers plane crashes, the number of people taking planes decreases, and it is well established that driving is more dangerous than flying, so the media covering plane crashes also results in more deaths.
There has also been a problem with copycat criminals for a long time.
I’m not sure what we can really do, since these are the kinds of things the news is supposed to cover. It’s the law of unintended consequences, I’m afraid.
Hey Troy thanks for the comment. Plane crashes are another good example of sensational media coverage.
There is no rule regarding what the news media is “supposed” to cover. They are corporations trying to make a profit, and follow whatever we, their viewers, decide to be interested in.
Thus it’s just a matter of raising our awareness to a higher level and changing our minds on what we consider news worthy.
Thank you for using the word Infotainment. Using this hybrid term is a very accurate, funny, and tragic description of what television and radio pass-off as news. In the late 1990’s, I was introduced to this word by a relative of mine, who worked in Hollywood at the time.
It’s the media just trying to make the whole thing more “real” by going into myopic details. And it is also true, the Infotainment industry is pretty sick.
Good write up, something that needs to be addressed. But who’s going to bring the issue up in the mainstream; freedom of the press belongs to those who own the presses.
Great article. Yes, that graphic is horrible. It makes a tragedy look like a video game. I feel so sorry for the families of victims who happen to see their loved ones reduced to little figures with letters on their chests.
Great article I too feel that the so called main stream news is nothing but entertainment. Why else will the devout hours upon hours of going into grisly details of something as tragic as that and not report real news that is happening and we have to scour the net for bloggers to post about.
Coleman
A little to in depth in my opinion. The image goes a bit overboard.
BTW I like you header
Dale
http://dzrbenson.com/blog/
You know what? Whenever I see those diagrams along with the news, I usually reading those diagrams. I find it disconcerting that people would still want to know which halls the shooter went through etcetera. Sometimes, I imagine, if the shooter was still alive, he would have fun seeing all of these. I think it goes the same for cases of sensationalized suicides, just what recently happened in my country. Though the press will always say it’s their job to let the viewers know what they want to know, they’ll have to tread carefully in these parts because most of the time they’re already losing sensitivity for those who’re really affected by the tragedies.
There are several problems with trying to stop this. First, news media is a business and so the more viewers, the more money. Second, ethics and business are two words that find themselves in the same sentence all too rarely anymore, perhaps as if America has lost a sense of identity, a sense of purpose, an anchoring morality (cultural, religious, otherwise), and so business’ only identity is to make more money. Third, life in American society has become an increasingly indoor, isolated, lonely. We have made our lives so safe, insulated ourselves so much from reality, that I think many people can only derive excitement or a sense of “life” from fixating on horrific tragedies of others. I think fourth, human nature plays in and there’s no changing that, and only slightly greater chance of reversing cultural trends in any significant way. -Michael
It didn’t really add to the story, but I don’t see the harm in it.
I completely agree — it’s getting excessive and repulsive
Jessie…
Thanks for the post. I couldn’t agree with you more….
[…] H’s article Media’s Coverage of School Violence Borders on Fetish posted at The Scholarpreneur. Really, blood, violence and sex sells and the mainstream media knows […]
[…] And so, in a few days, it is expected that these unfortunate incidents will be gaining more media coverage. And that reminds me of an article I’ve read just a month ago which claimed that the media’s coverage of school violence is already bordering on a fetish. […]
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