What is it with News Agencies?
I first noticed it when we lived in the Chicago area - and it’s continued in every location we’ve lived in.
“Up next, the local connection to the (Insert random tragic event here)! Stay tuned!”
What does this say about our nation? Does it say we’re media hounds and that any time something happens, people pick up the phone and give testament to their ‘first hand knowledge’ (which is usually NOT first hand) of an event or does this say we’re a bunch of stuck up morons who could care less about what is going on 100 miles away, unless it impacts us here, locally?
Likely a combination of both.
I was watching a local news station last night that had a story about the NIU shooting. Like networks all across the nation, they had a ‘local connection’ and I literally laughed coffee through my nose when they finally got to that segment and the ‘local connection’ was a man who had a grandparent (long deceased) who lived in Dekalb County (note, county, not even town). What in the world could this man tell us about NIU, about the shooter or about the current mentality? Are we actually more tuned in because this guy from Scottsdale had a family member who used to live (and has been dead for a long time) there? Does that make the story more ‘tune-in-able’?
I have to say, having lived in Dekalb county, just a few short miles from the NIU campus - my first thought was not “OMG PICK UP THE PHONE AND CALL CHANEL 13!!!” - I was deeply saddened. I wondered if the next door neighbor that attended NIU for Pre-Law was there. I wondered if she’d think it was odd for me to call, two years after moving, to check in on her. I wondered if the small two lane main drag through town (and right up next to NIU) was closed and how people were dealing with that. I wondered if they closed the exits (2 and only 2) from the interstate to Dekalb, to reduce the amount of ‘gawker’ traffic from the city. Mostly, I wondered how the people I had lived next to and shopped with were dealing with this tragic event that likely shut the entire city down.
It’s really sad that major tragic events such as this are so ‘every day’ that we’ve got to have a ‘local connection’ to even care.
I was reading one news story where they stated that this was the 5th school shooting that week - and I had to go Google the topic just to find out what 4 other shootings happened that weren’t big enough to make national news (or make it to my radar at least). I was devastated to discover that I had become so numb to the world that I didn’t even know that our country had experienced a number of loses that week…
Interested in reading more about the history of school shootings? U.S. News and World Report published a “Timeline of School Shootings” on their website recently. How incredibly pathetic that there are enough of these to warrant a three page timeline, detailing school shootings across America, starting with the UT-Austin shooting in 1966.
Comments
Leave a Reply
-
Meet Brandy
Adoptee, Mom, First Mother and Wife, living, loving and writing about life as I see it.
Have a question or comment? Contact Me
