Dear Commercial Media,
How DARE you? How do you find it in you to sleep after the pathetic abuse and ratings exploitation of a very, very unfortunate incident in collegiate history. You’re in a ratings dash on the back of this tragedy, and the backs of all the true people involved,. You’re shameless, with your hushed tones, and your weeping victims, juicing every sense of emotion and galvanizing the event into a nice, packaged container, replete with it’s own ‘Massacre’ theme music and eye candy graphics. You’ve nicely injected yourself into the situation without invitation, not for the sake of informing any one person about any real, RELEVANT news, but for the sake of entertainment, because it is new, and interesting, and people will watch. You make me sick.
Where’s coverage of the two men arrested yesterday for being IRAQI SPIES IN THE US? Where is the public outrage over the infiltration of men obviously linked to Saddam Hussein’s regime in the late 90’s? Where was the “full Team coverage” of this? How many of you stopped for ten minutes to think about the death tolls of citizens in Iraq, Darfur, Isreal, before your selfish lust for “the scoop” and your deplorable desire for ratings drove you to commercialize and sensationalize an event that didn’t need any help at all being sensational. Taking nothing away from the tragedy the people of Virginia Tech and their families have, and will have to endure in the coming days, weeks, months, and years, I challenge anyone to stop and look at a weeks death toll from your favorite hotspot in the Middle East and recognize these places lose this many people daily. Where are the boxed, compartmentalized panels discussing and profiling the backgrounds of the suicide bombers who kill hundreds of innocents? Where are the salutes to the Darfur woman who was trying to be a better mother to her children by trying to get an education, and was murdered in a genocidal cleansing? I’m not reading about how the nutjob who killed all those people in that marketplace that one time had written things about killing a bunch of the people he hated.
You’re sending the wrong message to the narcissistic whackjobs out there. If you kill, we will come with our cameras and sensationalist personalities. If you blow it up, we’ll cover it, 24 hours, for the next few days. Just make sure it has emotional overtones. That sells. Be of foreign descent. That makes it easier for us to hate you. You make a crazy, deluded video about what you’ve done or are going to do, we promise to play it on the air. We WANT to show it. Thirty times in two hours. The other stations will jump in, too, so believe us, we’ll get you a wide demographic. We’re sure of it. Hopefully we can scoop some weird stuff about your life from the people who know you. Just make it good. The more crazy and brutal, the better it will sell. This isn’t helping the kid considering doing this. This is only telling him that he’ll finally have the audience he always wanted and never got.
Advertisers couldn’t WISH for a more diverse demographic all tuned in at the same time. Massacre! Sponsored by ! It would almost make strategic ad sense to HIRE someone to do this, and advertise that same week. If I were the head of a corporation, I would be making frenzied phone calls right now telling my Ad department to get recurring ads running on all the major news stations. Nothing like associating top of mind about their product with a major US event.
The Olympics, major American sporting events, and tragic massacres. All covered with eager enthusiasm, all terribly entertaining, and all fun to keep score at and interview the players/victims in and out of the game. Veterans from previous eras step up and talk about how their game/massacre was different, and how the modernization of the sport/weapons have made scores so much higher and raised the bar. Superstars/murderers are icons to be worshipped/talked about incessantly on and off the field/”Ground Zero”. It is now fun and lucrative for people to be good at sports/crazy.
I had to shake my head in astonished disappointment when I flipped through the channels this evening. Every 24-hour news station was beating the horse to death. I then watched in antithesis as our comedic relief in the world of news, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, failed to mention but once between the two (and this even in passing) the events that had occurred.
And a post script to the kings in their castles concerning the recent regurgitation that video games are to blame for these violent events. Social dysfunction, religious zealotry, and mental illness cause violent crimes. You can’t stop a man from killing a bunch of people if he’s determined to do so. You can only hope to remedy the problem before the fracture with reality occurs.
Commercial media should stop and review their procedures. Sensationalism and celebration should be attached to events worthy of an entire network’s coverage. Somber recognition of the people involved should be a universal cause, a commitment to fair and balanced on a grander scale. Murderers should be trivialized, briefly mentioned, and sanctioned from further recognition. Anything more is empowering the next deluded whackjob. Do your job. Give us the news. Not ratings-driving entertainment.
How DARE you? How do you find it in you to sleep after the pathetic abuse and ratings exploitation of a very, very unfortunate incident in collegiate history. You’re in a ratings dash on the back of this tragedy, and the backs of all the true people involved,. You’re shameless, with your hushed tones, and your weeping victims, juicing every sense of emotion and galvanizing the event into a nice, packaged container, replete with it’s own ‘Massacre’ theme music and eye candy graphics. You’ve nicely injected yourself into the situation without invitation, not for the sake of informing any one person about any real, RELEVANT news, but for the sake of entertainment, because it is new, and interesting, and people will watch. You make me sick.
Where’s coverage of the two men arrested yesterday for being IRAQI SPIES IN THE US? Where is the public outrage over the infiltration of men obviously linked to Saddam Hussein’s regime in the late 90’s? Where was the “full Team coverage” of this? How many of you stopped for ten minutes to think about the death tolls of citizens in Iraq, Darfur, Isreal, before your selfish lust for “the scoop” and your deplorable desire for ratings drove you to commercialize and sensationalize an event that didn’t need any help at all being sensational. Taking nothing away from the tragedy the people of Virginia Tech and their families have, and will have to endure in the coming days, weeks, months, and years, I challenge anyone to stop and look at a weeks death toll from your favorite hotspot in the Middle East and recognize these places lose this many people daily. Where are the boxed, compartmentalized panels discussing and profiling the backgrounds of the suicide bombers who kill hundreds of innocents? Where are the salutes to the Darfur woman who was trying to be a better mother to her children by trying to get an education, and was murdered in a genocidal cleansing? I’m not reading about how the nutjob who killed all those people in that marketplace that one time had written things about killing a bunch of the people he hated.
You’re sending the wrong message to the narcissistic whackjobs out there. If you kill, we will come with our cameras and sensationalist personalities. If you blow it up, we’ll cover it, 24 hours, for the next few days. Just make sure it has emotional overtones. That sells. Be of foreign descent. That makes it easier for us to hate you. You make a crazy, deluded video about what you’ve done or are going to do, we promise to play it on the air. We WANT to show it. Thirty times in two hours. The other stations will jump in, too, so believe us, we’ll get you a wide demographic. We’re sure of it. Hopefully we can scoop some weird stuff about your life from the people who know you. Just make it good. The more crazy and brutal, the better it will sell. This isn’t helping the kid considering doing this. This is only telling him that he’ll finally have the audience he always wanted and never got.
Advertisers couldn’t WISH for a more diverse demographic all tuned in at the same time. Massacre! Sponsored by ! It would almost make strategic ad sense to HIRE someone to do this, and advertise that same week. If I were the head of a corporation, I would be making frenzied phone calls right now telling my Ad department to get recurring ads running on all the major news stations. Nothing like associating top of mind about their product with a major US event.
The Olympics, major American sporting events, and tragic massacres. All covered with eager enthusiasm, all terribly entertaining, and all fun to keep score at and interview the players/victims in and out of the game. Veterans from previous eras step up and talk about how their game/massacre was different, and how the modernization of the sport/weapons have made scores so much higher and raised the bar. Superstars/murderers are icons to be worshipped/talked about incessantly on and off the field/”Ground Zero”. It is now fun and lucrative for people to be good at sports/crazy.
I had to shake my head in astonished disappointment when I flipped through the channels this evening. Every 24-hour news station was beating the horse to death. I then watched in antithesis as our comedic relief in the world of news, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, failed to mention but once between the two (and this even in passing) the events that had occurred.
And a post script to the kings in their castles concerning the recent regurgitation that video games are to blame for these violent events. Social dysfunction, religious zealotry, and mental illness cause violent crimes. You can’t stop a man from killing a bunch of people if he’s determined to do so. You can only hope to remedy the problem before the fracture with reality occurs.
Commercial media should stop and review their procedures. Sensationalism and celebration should be attached to events worthy of an entire network’s coverage. Somber recognition of the people involved should be a universal cause, a commitment to fair and balanced on a grander scale. Murderers should be trivialized, briefly mentioned, and sanctioned from further recognition. Anything more is empowering the next deluded whackjob. Do your job. Give us the news. Not ratings-driving entertainment.
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