Even when it does.
Oh goodie, we can stop obsessing
about Ebola and the Ottawa shooting and renew the obsessive hysteria
about school violence until something else happens. Of course something
else is happening constantly, but there's no money in discussing it
when you compare it to the blockbuster ratings boost from red-eyed,
glued to the tube, round the clock repetition of the same damned video
clips under the rubric of "breaking News!"
I suppose
there will be little or no comment on the likelihood that the massive
coverage will produce copy-cat incidents of suicide by shooting spree
and the usual refusal to attempt perspective by noting that such things
seem to clump, but all in all have been declining significantly - over
50% - for more than 20 years. It's more profitable to claim that schools
aren't safe although impartial statistics
seem to show it's more dangerous at home and that any one American
school can expect to have a gun or explosives incident only about once
in 12,800 years. People are demonstrably terrible at assessing risk and
news providers get rich by helping them panic while other institutions
of reform and anti-reform distract and misinform to promote their
programs, all of them so convinced of their rightness and righteousness,
truth can be damned as an obstruction and lies praised as noble.
"I suppose there will be little or no comment on the likelihood that the massive coverage will produce copy-cat incidents ..."
ReplyDeleteWith so many incidents from which to choose, how do we know which one in specific will be copied? How many suicides by chewing gum or talking in class do we hear about? None, which is why we need more creative thinking here! How about death by thumbtack attack! The only thing that stops a bad guy with chalk is a good guy with a blackboard erasure.
The sensationalism, I suspect, is driven by public debate over the NRA’s strategy of mystification, smoke and obstruction.