Archive: News

I grew up in a city called Newton (Fig Newtons were named for the city I grew up in, and I am very fond of Fig Newtons).  In 1691 it was named Newtown, so I always perk up when a Newton or a New Town are in the news.  So the story about the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut immediately caught my eye as I scanned my morning news.  And then another.  And another.  And another...

Here's the thing: everyone jumps on gun control as soon as a school shooting happens.  I think it is right to have that debate.  But the debate I see very little of is how the mainstream press sensationalizes the event, which I think has more to do with new school shootings than guns do.

Anyone who has kids (which is a lot of us) and anyone who has been a kid (which is most of us) knows that kids are about 'me'.  As they grow older they become more about you and me and us.  But older kids who feel apart -- and what kid do you know that hasn't told you or someone that they are weird or different in some way -- are more about me than you or us.  Sure most kids do use their apartness to be part of a group of friends who have the same apartness.  But some kids become more isolated, and the me-ness is all they have.

Have you ever noticed how old people like to talk about their aches and pains?  As an initiate into this demographic, I am understanding it better now.  These aches and pains (and the resulting doctor visits and medical indignities) become much bigger in their world, as friends die and their social world begins to shrink.  Also a bad pain is distracting, depressing, and isolating.  It's similar to what kids feel when they feel socially ostracized.

But kids don't have the lifetime of restraint and perspective that older people have.  They both want attention, but if kids feel they are not getting it they tend to do more things to get it.  If they are really isolated, full of me-ness, and desperate for attention they may do something really extreme like committing suicide or killing a bunch of kids and teachers.

This is why the relentless mainstream press attention this and similar events have been given is dangerous.  Sure, guns are dangerous in the wrong hands, but they are just tools.  Killing people as a way of getting attention is very dangerous, only when it actually gets you a lot of attention.  That was the dangerous path we began to tread with the Columbine, Colorado High School massacre, and one we continue to follow today.

I am not saying this tragedy isn't news.  Of course it is.  But how do you feel about reporters sticking microphones in the faces of bereaved parents and friends asking them insipid questions like 'How do you feel?' at a time when they deserve some space?  Does that make your understanding of the tragedy any better?  And even if it does, does your view of this horrific event matter more than the privacy of the people who are really suffering from it?

Then the next kid comes around.  He is mad, really mad at how he has been bullied, ignored, passed uncaring through the system, or whatever he is really, really mad about.  'I'll show them,' he thinks, sometimes with a clear idea of who them is, and sometimes not.  'And boy, everybody will know about me and pay attention to me,' he'll think.  'Because look at all the attention Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Adam Lanza got.'

As a journalist I am all about the people's right to know.  As a citizen I am all about reporting responsibly as much as possible.  Reporting more than the bare facts of a story like this is not responsible.  The story should be about the facts, not sensationalizing, not humanizing, not incipidizing.  And certainly not about the challenge of filling a cable network with 24 hours worth of news every day.

If you have ever thought like a kid you know that the getting all that attention part is what motivates these horrendous acts.  It doesn't take psychiatry to know this.  Think about it for a minute and you know it.

The gun is the tool for carrying it out, and getting the gun is simply a matter of logistics.  Without the motivator tools and logistics become irrelevant.  The motivator, irresponsible press attention, is where the debate should begin.

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