I would expect at least one three lettered news outlet to devote relatively less air time to the story.
I can’t imagine the level of rage and darkness within that might cause an 18 yo to randomly slaughter a bunch of kids. This is ISIS-level diabolical. But those guys are fueled by drugs and doctrine.
BTW it seems to be 15 dead now.
I see 18 children plus 3 adults now:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/texas-school-district-locked-reports-shooter-84940954
ETA: Seems to be the same numbers as reported by Paul_in_Saudi’s cite in the Houston Chronicle a few posts back.
I think there is a formula used by TV news directors to decide how much ‘play’ to give a mass-shooting. It takes into account: number of victims; age of victims; race of victims (if white, go to white-folk socio-economic sub-formula).
It’s proprietary, like the formula for Coke, but certain patterns can be discerned. E.g. when there’s more than X victims and they are less than Y years-old then Z (race) doesn’t matter.
It’s helpful to use the journalism metric “Natalees” when comparing the gravity of different news items. E.g.:
46 murdered Black 7-year olds = 1 Natalee
1 missing Natalee Holloway = 1 Natalee
18 dead children killed in a mass shooting at a school in America is going to make national news regardless of whether they’re white, black, Hispanic or Klingon.
Now if it happened in another country, it would probably drop below the fold.
Dang! I forgot location in my above calculations.
I’m not sure I agree with that. A mass shooting like this rarely happens anywhere but in the US. How would it not be in the news? I don’t want to stray into politics so I’ll leave it at that.
It’s international news, not just national. It was ‘breaking news’ at around 7.30am this morning on my news channel. Australia.
Nah, if they emphasize the race of the shooter and downplay the race of the victims, they could make serious political hay out if it outside of guns.
It’s the top story on all our networks here in Canada, too.
I had the same reaction on first reading - but I think @flurb must have meant if the shooting happened in another country, it would drop below the fold in the U.S. news, not the the news in the country where it happened. Still not sure it’s true, but’s its the only way it makes any sense.
You are correct regarding my intended meaning. And I’ll amend my statement somewhat – if it happened in a developed nation, it would make the American news. If it happened in a developing nation, Americans would assume it was the third mass shooting there this week.
I think it would run top of the news, for days and days in certain US news networks.
Edited to add after flurb updated: I still think that is true for certain US news networks, doesn’t depend on the country. Some networks want to prove that mass gun killings happen everywhere, even those with strict gun control.
Texas had one of the early mass shootings. Univ of Texas Tower shooting August 1, 1966.
I wish the best for the survivors and the grieving families. They need our prayers and support.
There aren’t enough words to describe my feelings at this barbaric and evil act.
This is the kind of school where it happened. Those poor (in more ways than one) children probably lived a lifetime of hopelessness, and then they met their ends this way.
This story, from Canada, certainly didn’t last very long either.
And what about the Las Vegas shooting - about 60 dead (I heard recently that one “survivor” had died from the aftereffects of their injuries) and over 500 injured, many of them from being trampled? That seemed to disappear really fast, too, although I realize it appears to have been because nobody could find a motive.
Well, just because they were poor doesn’t necessarily mean they lived with hopelessness. But thinking about that makes the whole situation even worse. The poor kids who had their whole lives ahead of them, who could’ve been or done anything.
There’s an excellent documentary about it called “Tower”, that aired on PBS a couple years ago. This one too saw a body count increase, also due to a death from complications of the shooting, in 2001. One of the fatalities was an 8-month-old fetus whose mother was shot in the belly. She made a complete recovery except for being unable to have more children.
Scroll down to “20th century” for a brief statement about a mass shooting that killed 6 and injured at least 25 - in 1903.
I thought of the Tower shootings as well not only due to the location but due to the fact he allegedly killed his grandmother before this spree. If that happened, I’d assume some form of brain or mind disturbance like with Whitman. Political and revenge killers don’t generally kill their family and relations before going on a generalized spree (although of course, revenge killers can certainly do just the former, and there’s exceptions like perhaps Port Arthur.)
This deserves to go viral. And he understands, because his father was murdered, although not in the U.S. and under very different circumstances.
The quantity of these mass shootings seems to be increasing. And reports indicate the shooters post to social media, in almost a warning about what they plan to do.
Is there any entity which monitors social media, watching for diatribes by potential shooters?
Would it be possible to stop someone before the killings?
Please?
~VOW