Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Did we all learn our lesson?

If one teenager caps another teenager, you will never even hear about it...

...unless he does it on school property, in which case it's a MASS! SCHOOL! SHOOTING! and you get a presidential news conference and everything. No doubt all the bullied kids lusting for revenge and burning to air their grievances are taking notes here.

Networks don't care, though, because look how much dish powder you can sell with these kinda ratings! Netflix may have Orange Is The New Black, but they ain't got dead kids and S.W.A.T. teams!

"If we play our cards right," think the broadcast newsrooms, "we can stay in the black and relevant for another ten, twenty years! They can't TiVo through this stuff!"
.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

YEAH!
Why don't we hear about all those restaurant shootings, or convenience store shootings, or fill-in-the-blank shootings?

Or the stabbings?

gfa

Wolfman said...

Considering my Congressweasel is already nattering about Universal Background Checks (she was complimented on her caring and compassion- she waited a whole sentence before veering iff to legislative fixes!) and the ATF is scrambling to provide an 'Ugent Trace', their words not mine, and it apparently used a .223 rifle, its a perfect storm to give the grabby little boogers a boost at the polls. They've been waiting to find a case like this one.

Weer'd Beard said...

But only if both kids are white and middle-classy.

Two black teens wearing gang colors capping each-other with stolen Glocks in home room doesn't even make the news.

Anonymous said...

I agree, especially the part about how soon the broadcast networks will collapse.

Matt W said...

Weerd, the media may ignor those black on black gang related "student" shootings, but CSGV sure didn't in spouting their "74 School Shootings Since Newtown" claim.

Mattexian said...

Lies! LIES! Everybody knows guns are banned on school property, so this couldn't happen, unless somebody broke the law!

Windy Wilson said...

If the "journalists" didn't think they were on a $#%$ing crusade, they might be rational and treat mass shootings the way they do teen suicide, which is with great discretion, since analysis shows there is a tremendous copycat effect, causing teen suicides to cluster. Just as there were a number of "smaller" murderss after Sandy Hook that were taken up by the running dog media, there have been a number of murders now after the Isla Vista murders. The sick $%^&S are drawn out the way firebugs are drawn out by hot dry winds from the east on hot days.

steve l said...

Brit snark master Charlie Brooker shows us this is an international failing in this clip from a few years ago: “This Sort Of Coverage Only Serves To Turn This Murdering Little Twat Into A Nihilistic Pin-Up Boy”

mikee said...

Hey, when was the last time you saw a long news segment on the spotted owl and logging, or the importance of recycling, or how the
GOP wants to starve school kids?

News reporting follows fads. And when viewership drops for the fad, the fad disappears from the news.

Despite the political utility of dead kids to Dems, the news will stop aggrandizing kids killing kids, likely about the same time as it is pointed out that the kids doing the killing are all from Dem families.

The next news fad: well, what is damn easy & cheap to produce a news segment on, with a lot of emotional content? That's right: Election 2014! Due to start any day now, and last as long as the news thinks they can help the Dems.

Weer'd Beard said...

That's even better because most of those "School Shootings" are drug deals and suicides that happened in parking lots and playgrounds at oh-dark-thirty, rather than a deranged tea-partier blasting up little Connor and Mackenzie while they drink their juice boxes.

Padded numbers are nothing but good ammo for our side if we can keep up with the message.

Mr. Engineering Johnson said...

That's pretty much dead on, and carrying that line of thought a step further, the more these stories are used to promote gun control the more they polarize news junkies into fearing guns and viewing guns as a source of power. The former pose a political threat and the latter a physical one.

David said...

One white kid in Oregon is apparently much more important than a couple dozen blacks in Chicago on any given weekend.

http://www.suntimes.com/27805191-761/7-dead-23-hurt-in-shootings-since-friday.html

staghounds said...

If only American Media could influence behavior like Austrian media…

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199208133270720


Virginia Kellogg understood back in 1949-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar6kRtCuuUo

Wolfman said...

Turns out it was a white middle class quiet one, with guns btained from the home after defeating the secure storage. Not entirely sure how this is going to spin. I CAN say that Universal Background Checks will do... Jack S---. Not that that ever stopped a lying weasel...

ProdigalSon said...

Someone brought up that the tactics these nutcases use are fundamentally the same as a "terrorist": Hit in a public, shocking manner, in a seemingly random way, and you will scare the shit out of people who don't understand probability (which is to say most people). It's a simple but effective form of psychological warfare.