Dear media, I know you won’t ever see my little blog. But your coverage of today’s massacre defies reason and I have to record my revulsion.
The ubiquitous pictures of the terrified children are horrendous in their insensitivity and poor taste. You can almost touch the Pulitzer dreams of each photographer, hoping to profit off of the stark terror displayed by those children, the faces of those families etched as they are with grief and fear. I hope the future honors you win and the royalties engendered by those images help you sleep well at night. They won’t help the loved ones who saw them today and thus learned their families were directly affected. They won’t help the children who see them on the Internet, in the news, and on television and have nightmares.
Mis-identifying the shooter reinforces the lesson that you all would always rather be first than right. You reported rumors all day from various anonymous sources – some accurate, some not – in an effort to stay in the spotlight. The awful effect this had on relatives from other states watching the national news while waiting to hear what happened to their loved ones in Connecticut is clearly irrelevant to you.
Now, I read that the shooter had a personality disorder. To coin a phrase – no shit. He killed 26 people. I think it’s safe to say he had issues.
I also read that his brother may have said he was autistic. Why is that newsworthy? Except, inexorably, to marginalize and stigmatize others on the autism spectrum, the vast majority of whom would never hurt anyone? They are already woefully isolated by the nature of their disorder. What point do you hope to make? You certainly have made sure that some autistic teens will be ostracized tomorrow at school. Some autistic elementary school children will be teased or have play dates, already rare, cancelled. What goal does reporting this achieve?
The focus on the gun control debate is distasteful. Reporting on the type of guns the shooter used, speculating on the number of rounds he shot – why is this important, unless you want to fan the flames of an already emotional issue? Of course, you’re also teaching another wanna be mass murderer what supplies he needs for his misadventure. But that does not matter as long as you can engender a debate about guns and, perhaps, at last, usher in meaningful gun control.
Most of all, yet again, you’re obsessing over a mass murderer. In the days to come, Adam Lanza will become a household name. And somewhere, another dark soul watches, waiting his chance to be lionized by the press, knowing he can do so if only he can outdo this latest murderous celebrity.
Merry Christmas, fourth estate. You’ve outdone yourselves. I hope you are proud of what you’ve accomplished today.
Thank you. I have asked my other friends to read and pass this on.
Thank you – all excellent points and exceptionally well put.