I found that the handling of this tragedy by the media was inappropriate. Before the 5:00 p.m. press conference with the school president and the police chief, they were speculating on just about every detail of this incident. My mother told me some stuff she had previously heard on the news, like the first shooting may have been domestic in nature, but when I watched the press conference, just about everything she had told me was addressed during it. Also, I’m tired of the media using tragedies as advertisements. I’m not sure about the rest of the country, but the Fox affiliate station I get was airing commercials for their 10:00 news program with the big, bold, animated words flying around the screen, such as “MASSACRE”, among other things. These were aired just like other FUD commercials, like “ARE YOUR CORN FLAKES KILLING YOUR FAMILY? MORE AT 10″. The media should take some responsibility for the “facts” that are presented to their audience. The media should also tone down its use of tragedies as advertising for news programs and show some respect to the victims and their families.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 6:35 am and is filed under education, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.