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I said, <i>"This is feeling that these shootings are part of something larger than all of us. People die, that's a tragedy. People die needless, that's a bigger tragedy. People die and our overreaction causes more and greater problems than the original killings: that's the worst-case scenario."</i>
There was a stat on TV the other day that showed that school shootings are actually down to 11, from 53 eight years ago.
53! Where was the media attention back then? Why weren't we all horrified beyond belief? Because even 53 is a ridiculously low number. One per state. Now it's 1 per every ten states.
About 1000 children die from drowning; now there's a much more meaningful number. It's just not a Springer show type of story.
On one hand, we're being fed by the media. But on the other hand, it's we who are feeding the media, with our interest or lack of interest in any particular news story. What maintains our interest is very carefully measured and worked out with great detail, every day.
As a society, we are moving from requiring a careful, journalistic approach to wanting every story to amaze us to a new level.
There was a story a couple years ago of a spring break travel agency allowing all kinds of craziness on the plane trip down to Mexico, including a wet t-shirt contest, in which high-school students were included. Now, lewdness amongst the young is not news, right? But in this case, there was VIDEO. Which meant the story was run not once, but several times, with a followup a few months later so they could run it during sweeps.
So, to me, the shootings themselves are not really as big a deal as the overreaction to them.
[Edited by Tony Shepps on 03-12-2001 at 01:22 AM]
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