Last week, there was a shooting in Colorado. No doubt everyone has heard of it by now, and they've heard misleading quotes, incomplete assessments, rumors, outright lies, and everywhere the young man's name all over the news. We've seen it and him and he knows he's going down in the history books, so now he's going to act or claim crazy. (As if a sane person would shoot up a theater and booby trap his own home.)
I'm not naming him. There are enough people and mechanisms doing that, and that is what this young man is eating up. He's FAMOUS! He's INFAMOUS! He's on the Front Page, he's the LEAD Story, he's on YouTube, he's shared and reshared on Facebook and other social media.
Everyone knows his name. He can sit back and wallow now. And that's exactly what he's going to do.
To most of the public, especially the politically attuned, the Horrible Happening is a new reason to scream and open debates about gun control. It is somehow the fault of the guns that they were amassed and misused in this fashion.
To me, the issue should be about the media. The Fourth Estate.
We have freedom of the press. That's a good and wonderful thing.
Until something like this happens.
The media is helpful when there is a question of locating a perpetrator or suspect. The media is at its best when reporting events as they unfold. The media is a force to be reckoned with when someone in the public eye is trying to hide secrets. The media tells us we have a right to know, and they will inform us. They can keep us informed of all rumors and speculations as long as they say they are rumors and speculation. Reporting of the booby traps may have saved lives.
But what, exactly, do we have a right to know about? What is needful and/or entertaining and informative? Do we need to know, on a national level, speculation and gossip?
Is it right to be shoving their microphones into the faces of families waiting for someone to come outside from the scene of a massacre? Is it our right to know when they finally accept the unbelievable unacceptable fact that their loved one is not coming away from the scene?
Is it our right to know what a mother thinks when her son has admitted to this type of horror? Has she no right to the privacy of thought?
Do we have a right to know about every clipped toenail or late bedwetting incident ever in the guilty person's history?
Do we have the right to decide -- believe -- he's guilty before there is any sort of due process?
Does the media have the right to claim our right to know gives them the right to lionize punks and publicity hogs?
There are no easy answers, which is why the problems have been unresolved for so many years. There is a right to know, but who can or should decide what anyone else has the right to know? Is there, or should there be, a time that it's right to know.
Difficult questions that need to be looked at and discussed and worked on as intently as gun control or defining insanity. It's no wonder that policing authorities try to conceal identities and evidence from the press. Irresponsible reporting compromises deaf, dumb, and blind justice.
And then, there are young men like this "joker" who do the deed, then, when the media is fully present, walks up to the police and says "Yeah, I did it," then spends the next three days -- or three months, three years, three decades -- smirking and preening and posing for the cameras.
He has the right to know how important he is
I'm not naming him. There are enough people and mechanisms doing that, and that is what this young man is eating up. He's FAMOUS! He's INFAMOUS! He's on the Front Page, he's the LEAD Story, he's on YouTube, he's shared and reshared on Facebook and other social media.
Everyone knows his name. He can sit back and wallow now. And that's exactly what he's going to do.
To most of the public, especially the politically attuned, the Horrible Happening is a new reason to scream and open debates about gun control. It is somehow the fault of the guns that they were amassed and misused in this fashion.
To me, the issue should be about the media. The Fourth Estate.
We have freedom of the press. That's a good and wonderful thing.
Until something like this happens.
The media is helpful when there is a question of locating a perpetrator or suspect. The media is at its best when reporting events as they unfold. The media is a force to be reckoned with when someone in the public eye is trying to hide secrets. The media tells us we have a right to know, and they will inform us. They can keep us informed of all rumors and speculations as long as they say they are rumors and speculation. Reporting of the booby traps may have saved lives.
But what, exactly, do we have a right to know about? What is needful and/or entertaining and informative? Do we need to know, on a national level, speculation and gossip?
Is it right to be shoving their microphones into the faces of families waiting for someone to come outside from the scene of a massacre? Is it our right to know when they finally accept the unbelievable unacceptable fact that their loved one is not coming away from the scene?
Is it our right to know what a mother thinks when her son has admitted to this type of horror? Has she no right to the privacy of thought?
Do we have a right to know about every clipped toenail or late bedwetting incident ever in the guilty person's history?
Do we have the right to decide -- believe -- he's guilty before there is any sort of due process?
Does the media have the right to claim our right to know gives them the right to lionize punks and publicity hogs?
There are no easy answers, which is why the problems have been unresolved for so many years. There is a right to know, but who can or should decide what anyone else has the right to know? Is there, or should there be, a time that it's right to know.
Difficult questions that need to be looked at and discussed and worked on as intently as gun control or defining insanity. It's no wonder that policing authorities try to conceal identities and evidence from the press. Irresponsible reporting compromises deaf, dumb, and blind justice.
And then, there are young men like this "joker" who do the deed, then, when the media is fully present, walks up to the police and says "Yeah, I did it," then spends the next three days -- or three months, three years, three decades -- smirking and preening and posing for the cameras.
He has the right to know how important he is
