This Video Needs to Be Replayed after Every Mass Shooting in America ift.tt/1oK4qXt While CNN and other news outlets pin America’s epidemic of mass shootings on everything from violent movies to gun culture, they might also take a moment to address the question “Why does this keep happening?”, a little closer to home. While responsible news outlets focus on the prevalence of and ease of access to guns, and others question the pervasive social attitudes which contribute to violence – the bulk of the mainstream media scours every grainy piece of CCTV footage of the killer, publishes every word of their now obligatory manifesto, and turns a mass murderer into an anti-hero. The corporate media is making role models out of psychopaths. In this sense, media outlets not covering these events, but socially influencing their preponderance, as Charlie Brooker demonstrates with great wit and brevity in the essential video below. Interestingly, film critic Roger Ebert eloquently expressed a nearly identical sentiment in his review of Elephant. Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about ‘Basketball Diaries’?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.” In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy. Now, do we take this a step further and blame CNN for mass shootings in America? Of course not. There are a litany of contributing factors at play in the mind of any killer. But this caravan of voyeurs must at some point turn the cameras upon themselves and ask: are we making this situation better, or worse? Share On: The Pay of Corporate CEOs Just Hit a Whole New Level of Crazy Pictures Reveal Creepy ‘Hitler Youth’ Group Recruiting Children in Wales Comments comments About The Author Source via OccuWorld #Occupy #OWS #occupywallstreet #OccupyHQ #GrassRoots #USA #US #Canada #Europe #Protest #rEvolution #Anon #Anonymous
Posted on: Wed, 28 May 2014 15:33:54 +0000
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