Boston news coverage

I am troubled by the news coverage of the Boston events this week. 3 people killed in the initial event, with a fourth later in the week. The top story of my local nightly news usually involves a shooting involving these numbers. :( Now yes, in addition to 3 innocent people killed, there were many injured and some horrifically. I am not saying this blast wasn't news worthy, just wondering if it was deemed disproportionately so. I mean a day or two later there was an explosion in Texas that killed 14 and injured over 100. The amount of coverage this tragic event received was dwarfed compared to Boston.

Now some will say the difference is one event was an accident, why the other a terror criminal event. And this is just my point. By sensationalizing this weeks events and turning them into such a mega news story, don't we play right into the hands of terrorists, any terrorists, by providing them the platform and attention they are after?

And finally, in an semi-related thought on the event, I would just as leave this second younger terrorist, die from his injuries. Hopefully, he still will. I would have prefered that police just continued firing rounds of bullets into that boat long past any movement and be done with it. Yes, I know the autorities think there is valuable information to be gained from questioning him. I think it just provides him more of a platform, as any sort of trial will also do. Again, I would welcome the news that he has died from his injuries.

It would be much more fun to be talking about the trial of the boat owner who blew the SOBs head off for tresspassing.

I'm not necessarily troubled by the coverage. I do happen to believe that the media provides a terrible disservice. They need to fill as much time as possible with events because it provides them with inexpensive content. An event with many possible angles to cover gets the coverage. If hyping an event will create more time killing content then the media does it. I think that weather forecasts are a prime example. They give you all of the little minutiae.....all the while being wrong most of the time. Is weather really worth as much time as is devoted to it? Maybe I'm just nuts, but definitely not for me. I'd rather that they just took 10 seconds to tell me, with one simple screenshot, their best guess as to what will happen for the week and leave it at that. Take the time saved and actually try to be informative.

Sports media is no better. They seem to always be after someone's job, yet when one of the authors, or broadcasters makes many bad calls they seem to think it's okay. If a football coach should lose his job for bad calls then so should the media...........

Sorry for the rant...........

Or here's a novel idea.....how about more coverage of the good things in life? The good people? The good events?

Quote: steeldco

Or here's a novel idea.....how about more coverage of the good things in life? The good people? The good events?

Capitalism is the root cause. The media is a profit driven machine. More eyeballs means more profits.

The spectacular explosions alone caused the eyeballs to get glued to the images.

Once the eyeballs are glued to the screen, there is a pretense of ensuring safety of the average American.

But more than the safety, the average person who is getting involved in the massive media event of this explosion isn't thinking about making the lives of other Americans safer. It's merely a pretense for efforts that are, on average, fully self-serving.

I am certain that celebrities of this event will write books, be interviewed on talk shows, be given things to advertise things that are for sale, and so on.

The fact that the collective consciousness of the country can agree that we are doing "good" by creating a culture of fear of people and cultures and laws and get our lawmakers all busy attempting to prevent the unpreventable is a great travesty of illusions of falsehoods we only wish to be true.

Quote: Steve Maraboli

“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't."

We have no control to prevent these things from happening. It could have just as easily have been individuals who were born and raised in the US by Ward and June Cleaver plotting the evil deeds in privacy in a treehouse where the two brothers plotted their devious plans for years.

If the plans were well concealed, nothing that happens in Washington DC is going to do anything to prevent this type of thing from occurring anymore.

They would have just as much efficacy in making it against the law for tsunami's or hurricanes to occur and hold trials sentencing God himself to life in prison.

At some point, the whole idea is ridiculous wishing for so much control over that which is not possible to control.

Quote: kewlj

I am troubled by the news coverage of the Boston events this week. 3 people killed in the initial event, with a fourth later in the week. The top story of my local nightly news usually involves a shooting involving these numbers. :( Now yes, in addition to 3 innocent people killed, there were many injured and some horrifically. I am not saying this blast wasn't news worthy, just wondering if it was deemed disproportionately so. I mean a day or two later there was an explosion in Texas that killed 14 and injured over 100. The amount of coverage this tragic event received was dwarfed compared to Boston.

Now some will say the difference is one event was an accident, why the other a terror criminal event. And this is just my point. By sensationalizing this weeks events and turning them into such a mega news story, don't we play right into the hands of terrorists, any terrorists, by providing them the platform and attention they are after?

And finally, in an semi-related thought on the event, I would just as leave this second younger terrorist, die from his injuries. Hopefully, he still will. I would have prefered that police just continued firing rounds of bullets into that boat long past any movement and be done with it. Yes, I know the autorities think there is valuable information to be gained from questioning him. I think it just provides him more of a platform, as any sort of trial will also do. Again, I would welcome the news that he has died from his injuries.

Boston got more coverage because it was terror and not an accident like Texas was. Boston just held attention longer by the nature of the story.

Boston had a manhunt, investigation, and media wishing it was the Tea Party that did it. Texas was just an industrial accident albeit a bad one.

Some stories get legs and some less so. It isn't the number of deaths but the reaction to them.

Oh man, don't get me started on the media...haha. They clearly have their own agenda on this and just about every other topic.

Quote: AZDuffman

Boston had a manhunt, investigation, and media wishing it was the Tea Party that did it. Texas was just an industrial accident albeit a bad one.

You got that right, AZ. Like after Aurora, ABC's Brian Ross was just itching to connect the shootings to the Tea Party. OTOH, I have yet to hear Ross mention that Russia warned us about Tamerlan Tsarnaev two years ago.

And thus ends the news cycle: news, reporting, arguments, complaints about coverage, partisan fight about the media. Until something else happens.

Quote: Ahigh

Capitalism is the root cause.

No. Sorry. I have to disagree. The root cause is people's inability to recognize crap....and then turn it off.

Also, I need to suggest that maybe having an outlet that presents the news with just the facts and then limits its opinion or comments to be no more
than the word count of the facts presented might do well. Also, giving the news staff as much time as they like to expound on feel good stories. Some outlet....any outlet that truly provides balanced reporting with a leaning towards the positive.

steeldco, I totally agree. The problem is that the media claims that they do this already, so the problem will unfortunately never be addressed.

The breakfast radio here always has a good news segment on the 7.30am news break. The only downside is I normally only hear this news segment and only get the good news for the day. Hmm, I'm not sure that is a downside, actually.

Quote: steeldco

No. Sorry. I have to disagree. The root cause is people's inability to recognize crap....and then turn it off.

Also, I need to suggest that maybe having an outlet that presents the news with just the facts and then limits its opinion or comments to be no more
than the word count of the facts presented might do well. Also, giving the news staff as much time as they like to expound on feel good stories. Some outlet....any outlet that truly provides balanced reporting with a leaning towards the positive.

Don't you remember the days before sensationalism? OJ trial happens then the media is just useless. I don't know what laws were changed or how they were deregulated to get here, but the media is just a branch of the corporate propaganda machine now. How do we go back? I have no idea. I don't watch the news now because I know most of it is either completely wrong or spinned enough to turn the color black seem like turquoise, and what they refuse to mention should often be the story.

Quote: onenickelmiracle

Don't you remember the days before sensationalism? OJ trial happens then the media is just useless. I don't know what laws were changed or how they were deregulated to get here, but the media is just a branch of the corporate propaganda machine now.

I feel that Boston was lucky to have less deaths than Waco.

Quote: steeldco

.. having an outlet that presents the news with just the facts and then limits its opinion or comments to be no more
than the word count of the facts presented might do well. Also, giving the news staff as much time as they like to expound on feel good stories. Some outlet....any outlet that truly provides balanced reporting with a leaning towards the positive.

You would watch that? Look deep into your soul and ask yourself if you would tune in to a 24/7 channel that 'per hour' had about 15 minutes of 'who, what, where and when without any why' and 45 minutes of puppies.

Quote: s2dbaker

You would watch that? Look deep into your soul and ask yourself if you would tune in to a 24/7 channel that 'per hour' had about 15 minutes of 'who, what, where and when without any why' and 45 minutes of puppies.

Maybe you're right? I don't know, but I think the news coverage can be vastly improved. It's a good thing that we have computers and the internet. At least I can quickly sift thru the crap and read just the facts. Is there still spin and hype? Yes, but I gloss over it. AND......I can watch the damn puppies at my leisure....

In the world of cable, Fox News is king in all time slots and on all shows, but in the 6pm hour, the total audience of all CABLE news is 3.8 million viewers, with Fox leading the way at about 1.5 million viewers. In the key opinion programs in the evening, Fox typically outnumbers its closest rival by a factor of 2:1.

About 21 million people combined watch the ABC/CBS/NBC evening news casts.

Though we like to complain about the cable news network spin bias, not many people are watching.

Most people don't get their news off of television anymore.

Quote: boymimbo

In the world of cable, Fox News is king in all time slots and on all shows, but in the 6pm hour, the total audience of all CABLE news is 3.8 million viewers, with Fox leading the way at about 1.5 million viewers. In the key opinion programs in the evening, Fox typically outnumbers its closest rival by a factor of 2:1.

Considering there are multiple news networks with a liberal point of view versus one network with a conservative point of view, this isn't very surprising.

Quote: boymimbo

Though we like to complain about the cable news network spin bias, not many people are watching.

Most people don't get their news off of television anymore.

Quote: kewlj

And finally, in an semi-related thought on the event, I would just as leave this second younger terrorist, die from his injuries. Hopefully, he still will. I would have prefered that police just continued firing rounds of bullets into that boat long past any movement and be done with it. Yes, I know the autorities think there is valuable information to be gained from questioning him. I think it just provides him more of a platform, as any sort of trial will also do. Again, I would welcome the news that he has died from his injuries.

Nearly 50 years ago, Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald two days after President Kennedy was killed. Had LHO lived, would we still have the conspiracy theorists concerning that event that are still prevalent today?

I think that the younger brother will eventually crack under questioning. The Boston bombing brothers had three days to get out of town; yet they had no exit strategy. Their method of terrorism was not sophisticated; it was actually quite simple. They didn't seem to be too bright.

We assume that these are the culprits, and all of them.

Of course, we will see plenty of 9/11 style truthers emerge, but lets not convict just yet.

Quote: thecesspit

We assume that these are the culprits, and all of them.

Of course, we will see plenty of 9/11 style truthers emerge, but lets not convict just yet.

Here's a conspiracy site already in the making.

Quote: s2dbaker

Here's a conspiracy site already in the making.

Quote: s2dbaker

Here's a conspiracy site already in the making.

I think I heard a report that the guy who has the site openly stated right away that he purchased the domain name specifically to keep it out of the hands of nutty conspiracy theorists.