I did not post about the tragedy at Virginia Tech yesterday. I felt a little guilty later on in the day, realizing that as I was watching the scroll across the bottom of the Marathon coverage, I was posting about how I slept until almost noon.

I thought about it as the day went on - why did this story not strike me like it struck others? More than it not striking me - I found myself 100% irritated at the news coverage. Both on the internet, and the television. I was very happy to hear that the campus and city police determined that the sole gunman was no longer at large, and that no one else would die. However. I didn't enjoy hearing (less than an hour after the shooting) the reporters asking questions like, "what type of gun might the shooter have used?"

Really? We're going to sit here and list types of guns that maybe the shooter might have used? That's news? Conjecture and fabrication is news?

I was also irritated when CNN.com put up their first banner: MONUMENTAL TRAGEDY. Really? And where is the cut off? When 4 people are killed, like at the CNN headquarters last week, it got a red banner of "breaking news" - but not the 9/11 style banner that this got. And then a week or so ago, when there was that workplace shooting in Michigan - again, just a red banner. Is it any # over 10? over 15?

I was surprised later in the day when the statement was made that this was the largest number of fatalities in modern times from a single shooting. To me, it felt like one in a series of many.

I was also surprised to see a few more-conservative-than-me bloggers who I subscribe to whipping out the "don't use this as gun control fodder!" preemptive argument, when I'd seen nothing of the sort from other blogs. Bloggers who are as or more liberal than myself (is there such a thing?) expressed sadness, surprise and shock. Not a peep on my sub list about gun control.

Then I was ANGRY to see the media as usual scurrying to find someone to blame. WHY do these things always result in blame games? I hate that so much. A horrible thing has happened. It's bad -- really, really bad. Do you have to malign the Virginia Tech security and police before you even know anything? Most of the stories on the major news sites weren't even STORIES - they were questions. "Did they do enough?" Does that have to be the first step? How can the police and/or security predict that a student (one of 26,000) is going to snap?

We hear about high numbers of people killed every single day now. Thanks to the war in Iraq. Most of them are Iraqis, and not Americans. But the numbers are often higher. Much higher. I feel like that is happening because of very wrong-headed decisions that are being made over and over and over and over again. In many ways, this upsets me more than what happened yesterday.

The events of yesterday fluke were very tragic, and many young people died - young people who thought they were just going to class, and who should have been able to just go to class. I wish it didn't happen.

Labels: media, politics, Virginia Tech

posted by Zuska @ 3:01 PM

1 Comments:

At Tuesday, April 17, 2007 5:18:00 PM, Caleb said…

Found you blog by way of Pissed Off Housewife.

I can only speak for myself, but one of the big reasons for the conservative/gun blogs to be concerned about this is because it's almost inevitable.

It's a function of the blame game that you were talking about. When the media is looking for something to place blame on, it often ends up being the gun that gets the heat for it. Whether that's right or wrong is up to you to decide.

Off subject slightly is that if you're really looking for someone to blame, I have the perfect candidate.