On this morning’s news they were giving some mini bios about some of the people killed in the 1/1/25 New Orleans truck attack. One was an ex college athlete in his 20s, another was in town to see the game…
Are you interested in such info? If so, why? What do you think the media’s purposes are in presenting such info? Is it just an aspect of the 24/7 news cycle? Does such info affect how you feel about such incidents? Is this considered some form of a public eulogy?
Personally, I’m not sure how much differently I would feel about this incident if the 14 dead were Nobel laureates as opposed to homeless people. Either way, it is a senseless tragedy.
I think after a tragedy such as this many people have a morbid curiosity about who the victims were as much as a curiosity about the perpetrators. Knowing they were regular people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time helps remind us how lucky we are to be alive. The media provides this information to anyone who is interested, and they wouldn’t bother to provide it if nobody was interested.
This sort of “humanization” of news stories seems to have been creeping in for decades now. I presume it’s intended to make plain facts more palatable and thus pander to diminishing attention spans, thus holding the audience (hmm - this is IMHO, after all). When it happens, I feel like I’m being patronized - to the extent that I’ve almost completely stopped watching television news. (Plus, I think it’s in some way that I can’t quite elaborate, related to clickbait. It’s doing similar things for similar reasons)
My guess is no; it’s to do with selling advertising.
Rather than that, it may be an attempt to humanize the victims. The news stories provide all sorts of information on the suspect, and the biographical information about the victims is necessary as well.
I remember after the events of September 11, 2001, the New York Times ran “Portraits of Grief”, which were brief biographies and photos of those lost that day. They ran a couple dozen of them each day for months.
I don’t wish to be dismissive of victims at all (and if that’s how my previous post reads, apologies, that wasn’t intended). But per your account, the NYT held their audience pretty well.
j
Ludicrous aside: I was going to add a quote I remembered: journalism is the writing on the back of the adverts - but couldn’t remember who said it. So (after a few false starts) I googled this
journalism is “the writing on the back of the adverts” Quote
- which got precisely one hit - SDMB (!) Are we smart or what?
Here is the post in question:
So, to answer my own question, some of us are smart, others not so much. But do I get to keep the quote now?
“This many people were killed and they were this old and these are their names” is fine. “She was a single mom working three jobs and taking night classes to become a phlebotomist” is excessive, doesn’t serve the public interest, and is just there to juice ratings and rile up the public against the suspect (as in the eulogizing of Brian Thompson, e.g.)
I’d prefer they just stick to the basics and let the family have their privacy and just report details that are relevant to the crime.
I glance at it briefly. Some of the reporters ask ones I would never pose eg “How does it feel to that you’re relative died and your house burned down?” My response would unfortunately be disrespectful toward the reporter. I admire other people’s politeness amid conversation for sure.
The Boy In The Box case has been reported on extensively in this area. When they finally established his identity after years of just being an anonymous victim, it was a major story. I didn’t have a problem with any of that. It was a seemingly unsolvable case. It was just so tragic. If the media attention helped in any way to find his identity or who killed him and abandoned the body, that would be great.
I also remember a few years ago, a woman was murdered. All the coverage kept repeating that she was working as a stripper at the time. I know that salacious details like that get ratings. But, I felt it was disrespectful and irrelevant. In my experience and opinion, most strippers are not prostitutes. They have decided that making foolish men give them large amounts of money by removing their clothes and dancing on stage is a good and easy way to make a living. Plus, the fact that she was a stripper had nothing to do with her death.
Some details are there for good reasons- to put a face on tragedy, to help the authorities get more information etc. Some details are just there to get ratings,
My wife and I just fast forward past victims’ histories when they’re on the nightly news. (Which we record just so can skip stuff.) Our feelings are that these stories are not “news” and shouldn’t be taking up so such time in a newscast that has precious few moments of actual news in it.
News programs started devoting the time after many people asked why they gave every detail of the perpetrator’s life and ignored the victims’. So now they try to treat them equally. (Which makes no sense at 14 to 1, but it started out as making no sense.) Yet it might be important to know what drove the perpetrator to do the deed. That could get defined as “news”, although the amount of time and detail is usually excessive and unnecessary. Being an innocent victim has no explanatory power. My sympathies, certainly, but that’s as empty as “thoughts and prayers.”
sometimes giving background info helps a family. Back in the late 80’s a young man working night hours as a convenience store clerk was murdered by a robber. He was going to college during the day, had a wife and young child. It was also mentioned his earler life had been hard.
A lot of people sent in donations, this was before GoFundMe. A radio station I listened to promoted the givingl so I sent something. I thought that would be it but some time later I got a hand written thank you from the family.
People seem to believe that TV news is there as a public service. It’s not. It’s there to sell advertising, same as everything else on non-public TV. It’s the same reason reporters shove microphones in people’s faces, asking “What was it like when your children and dogs got run over by the train?” People love tearjerkers and it sells stories. Clearly the audience eats it up or they wouldn’t continue doing it.
I pretty much think they print this stuff because they need to fill space - which sells advertising. That’s why they print so much “human interest” crap. If it is cheap and easy and fills column inches, print it. With the 24/7 news cycle - they have to push SOMETHING as “news.” You get something like a mass murder, or an ex-President’s death, you just milk that story for as much as you can.
Yeah. The news is generally full of information about the murderer(s). Talking only about the murderer and not about the murdered seems wrong. Especially when the murderer may have committed the crime at least in part in order to become famous; and the murdered may have seemed like nothings to them. It’s saying ‘here are the ones who really matter/ed’.
There is no lack of actual news to fill space. It’s an easy, lazy way to get cheap content while appealing to the people who feed off the tragic. And evidently they get points from people who think the news is doing it as a public service.
