If there is one thing we can be sure of, when the worse mass shooting in contemporary American history occurs, it will be news.
In reviewing how this horrible event is being covered by the media, we see some pretty typical and predictable elements in their stories. For example, there are tributes to the "naive and innocent victims."
And there are stories about the "heroes" that helped save the day.
And of course, both have lots of video where you can watch the shooting happen. How sick is that?
I wonder how long it will take to face the reality of what is undeniably behind this--the presence of far too many guns in our society. Consider this, from the Washington Post:
"At least 21 children and two teachers were killed
when a fire broke out at a school in Kuala Lumpur. Witnesses reported
hearing cries for help from inside the burning building and seeing
children unable to escape because of metal grills on windows.
Renovations to the building had reportedly blocked a fire
exit. Officials are examining whether an electric short circuit caused
the fire."
Ask yourself, where is Kuala Lumpur? You probably don't even know, so why is this news in the US? And why is it one of five things you NEED to know today?
Meanwhile, over at Fox News, these are two of the top stories today. Each has other stories "linked" ot it, even though the other stories are in no way related!
Thousands
of immigrants and supporters join the Defend DACA March to oppose the
President Trump order to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
program on September 10, 2017, in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: David
McNew / Getty Images)
With 17 states filing two lawsuits over Trump's DACA rescission, it
is more likely that the fate of the Dreamers will be decided in the US
Supreme Court rather than in Congress, which would have to defy years of
history to agree on comprehensive immigration reform. But if Trump gets
to appoint one more justice to the court, DACA may well be struck down.
Why is this shooting news when other gun murders happened dozens of times over the weekend?
It could be because Alabama is the number 1 team in the nation? And because their first game this year was the most watched opening game ever? That is CNN's story just below the one about the shooting.
You might think this is a good idea. You might think it is a bad idea. What do the "experts" think? And which experts are being interviewed?
In chapter 1 of your book, it is argued that these kinds of stories often feature the voices of police and politicians. Is that what you see in these news articles on the story?
As you will see in the book, the mainstream media are owned by for-profit corporations, and as a result, many important stories are either downplayed or ignored altogether. Here are a few examples that are found today on the news website, Truthout, but not mainstream media outlets:
Single-payer health care is still a controversial idea in the US, but
a majority of physicians are moving to support it, a new survey finds.
Fifty-six percent of doctors registered either strong support or were
somewhat supportive of a single-payer health system, according to the
survey by Merritt Hawkins, a physician recruitment firm.
Both Donald Trump and his neoliberal opponents seem to agree that
NAFTA has been good for Mexicans, but in reality, the pact caused Mexico
to lose millions of jobs, especially in the agricultural sector, and
resulted in a sharp increase in migration to the US. If NAFTA is
renewed, it will continue to benefit transnational corporate moguls
rather than workers.
Ah ha! Finally a media story, albeit an op-ed, about the power to define.
As noted in the book, it is lawmakers who get to decide what is crime and what is not, what drugs are harmful and which are not, and what is terrorism and what is not. Here is an opinion piece about this issue. Do you agree or not? And why?
I've taken some time off the blog but since a new edition of the book is coming out soon, I will be blogging again soon about top stories in the news and entertainment as they related to crime and criminal justice.
You can register to comment on this site and interact with me. And you can also use the search box to examine what has been blogged about here in the past. Just enter any term and hit search!
A UN ENVOYwarns of ‘massacres, humanitarian tragedies, rapes and horrific violence’ if the world does not act against ISIS as the terrorist group moves in on the city of Kobani; above, Turkish soldiers watch over the key border city.
The following are all relevant, fact-based issues, the "hard news"
stories the media has a responsibility to report. But the
business-oriented press generally avoids them.
1. U.S. Wealth Up $34 Trillion Since Recession. 93% of You Got Almost None of It.
That's
an average of $100,000 for every American. But the people who already
own most of the stocks took almost all of it. For them, the average gain
was well over a million dollars, tax-free as long as they don't cash it
in. Details available here.
2. Eight Rich Americans Made More Than 3.6 Million Minimum-Wage Workers
A recent report stated
that no full-time minimum wage worker in the U.S. can afford a
one-bedroom or two-bedroom rental at fair market rent. There are 3.6 million such workers, and their total (combined) 2013 earnings is less than the 2013 stock market gains of just eight Americans, all of whom take more than their share from society: the four Waltons, the two Kochs, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett.
3. News Sources Speak for the 5%
It
would be refreshing to read an honest editorial: "We dearly value the 5
to 7 percent of our readers who make a lot of money and believe that
their growing riches are helping everyone else."
Instead, the business media seems unable to differentiate between the top 5 percent and the rest of society. The Wall Street Journal exclaimed, "Middle-class Americans have more buying power than ever before," and then went on to sputter: "What Recession?...The economy has bounced back from recession, unemployment has declined.."
The Chicago Tribune may
be even further out of touch with its less privileged readers, asking
them: "What's so terrible about the infusion of so much money into the
presidential campaign?"
4. TV News Dumbed Down for American Viewers
A 2009 survey by the European Journal of Communication compared
the U.S. to Denmark, Finland and the UK in the awareness and reporting
of domestic vs. international news, and of "hard" news (politics, public
administration, the economy, science, technology) vs. "soft" news
(celebrities, human interest, sports and entertainment). The results:
Americans [are] especially uninformed about international public affairs.
American respondents also underperformed in relation to domestic-related hard news stories.
American television reports much less international news than Finnish, Danish and British television;
American television network newscasts also report much less hard news than Finnish and Danish television.
Surprisingly,
the report states that "our sample of American newspapers was more
oriented towards hard news than their counterparts in the European
countries." Too bad Americans are reading fewer newspapers.
5. News Execs among White Male Boomers Who Owe Trillions to Society
The
hype about the "self-made man" is fantasy. In the early 1970s, we
privileged white males were spirited out of college to waiting jobs in
management and finance, technology was inventing new ways for us to make
money, tax rates were about to tumble, and visions of bonuses and
capital gains danced in our heads.
While we were in school the
Defense Department had been preparing the Internet for Microsoft and
Apple, the National Science Foundation was funding the Digital Library Initiative research that would be adopted as the Google model, and the National Institute of Health was
doing the early laboratory testing for companies like Merck and Pfizer.
Government research labs and public universities trained thousands of
chemists, physicists, chip designers, programmers, engineers, production
line workers, market analysts, testers, troubleshooters, etc.
All we created on our own was a disdainful attitude, like that of Steve Jobs: "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
6. Funding Plummets for Schools and Pensions as Corporations Stop Paying Taxes
Threeseparatestudies have
shown that corporations pay less than half of their required state
taxes, which are the main source of K-12 educational funding and a
significant part of pension funding. Most recently, the report, "The
Disappearing Corporate Tax Base" found that the percentage of corporate
profits paid as state income taxes has dropped from 7 percent in 1980
to about 3 percent today.
7. Companies Based in the U.S. Paying Most of Their Taxes Overseas
Citigroup had
42% of its 2011-'13 revenue in North America (almost all U.S.) and made
$32 billion in profits, but received a U.S. current income tax benefit
all three years.
Pfizer had
40% of its 2011-'13 revenues and nearly half of its physical assets in
the U.S., but declared almost $10 billion in U.S. losses to go along
with nearly $50 billion in foreign profits.
In 2013 Exxon had about 43% of management,
36% of sales, 40% of long-lived assets, and 70-90% of its productive
oil and gas wells in the U.S., yet only paid about 2 percent of its
total income in U.S. income taxes, and most of that was something called
a "theoretical" tax.
8. Restaurant Servers Go Without Raise for 30 Years
An evaluation by Michelle Chen showed
that the minimum wage for tipped workers has been approximately $2 an
hour since the 1980s. She also notes that about 40 percent of these
workers are people of color, and about two-thirds are women.
I was in the gym on campus today and numerous TVs were on.
The one tuned to CNN featured a live speech by President Obama.
The one tuned to Fox News showed Obama's speech in a small video box while a talking head (who happens to be very anti-Obama) was given the larger part of the screen. On that channel it was her voice that was being heard.
Meanwhile, the CNN audience actually got to listen to the President.
Incredibly, as Obama spoke on CNN, Fox News actually showed a clip of President Bush giving a speech.
This is one of the major explanations for why the media get it so wrong--i.e., for why the news media often make stupid mistakes when it comes to covering crime and criminal justice.
The former Olympian escaped the more serious charge of murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend.
Faces up to 15 years in jail »
15 years in JAIL?
Sorry, media, that is not possible. People who are incarcerated for more than a year go to prison, not jail. There is a difference, and it actually matters.
Thousands
of immigrants and supporters join the Defend DACA March to oppose the
President Trump order to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
program on September 10, 2017, in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: David
McNew / Getty Images)
Reuters
