So what? Nobody does journalism from the goodness of their heart. They do it for money, or fame, or some sort of political agenda - and honestly, the ones I trust the most are the ones who do it for money. The problem with mainstream media today (and by that I especially mean Fox News and its ilk) isn’t that it cares about money, it’s that it cares about things that aren’t money.
Has that always been the case? Sure, there was always a “yellow press”, but didn’t some print and air outlets at least have some values they did not sacrifice to maximize $. And today, there is still The Economist, and perhaps NPR/PBS…
There was a time in the past when publications understood that a good reputation was worth good money, and took care to have one, even at the expense of short-term gains. Unfortunately, those days are pretty much gone.
Go look at contemporary reporting from the whitechapel murders; extensive focus on victims is nothing new.
I tend to skip it as well. And it goes beyond just the news. Even documentaries and youtubers do it. When I’m watching a documentary on a plane crash, to be perfectly honest, I don’t really need a 2 minute clip of a random passenger’s wife talking about what a great father her husband was and how much he loved the family dog. I want to know why the rudder was cranked all the way to one side.
Similarly, when I watch a youtube video on a factory fire that happened decades ago, the names of the victims are irrelevant to me.
In these cases I understand why they’re doing it, and while I skip past it if it’s getting long winded, I guess it’s nice for people that want to know more about the story beyond just the facts.
When it comes to crime victims and the news, specifically mass shooting/killing type crimes, while I’m still not all that interested in the unrelated backgrounds of the victims, I’d rather they spent more time on them than on unrelated background details of the suspect, related background, however, is more newsworthy.
Does that make sense? That is, I don’t really care that the suspect loved playing the piano. I do kinda care if the suspect drowned the family pet.
IOW, lets not glorify the suspect or give them, even posthumously, any more media attention than required.
I was also thinking that there used to be (at least in the US) regulations applying to the networks, requiring public service programming and the like.
I had the impression that at least the national newscasts were somewhat of “loss leaders” conveying “prestige” upon their networks. Local has been “if it bleeds, it leads” for as long as I can remember.
It would be interesting to see if there is comparable reportage of victim info across various demographics. Is this incident receiving attention because of the type of persons who are most likely to be celebrating New Year’s on Bourbon Street. As opposed to - say - a workplace shooting in some rural area. Are these victims more likely to have appealing details to report? I very briefly looked at one site that profiled the victims. I found it curious the way they had more to say about some of the victims than others. Part of that seemed to be how much a victim had others who wanted to share their grief. Some of the info came from family members, others from employers/schools…
This is a good thread to bring up something that mystified me at the time, and I now think was a blatant example of “If it bleeds, it leads.”
In 1987, I think it was, People magazine* devoted a lot of attention to a girl, aged six or so, named Sage Volkman, who had been burned about as badly as a human can be and still live. And don’t get me wrong; I had plenty of sympathy for her, and her family. Still, I just couldn’t figure out what the point was. Ryan White was The Human Face of AIDS, and I didn’t feel manipulated, reading about him. James Brady, yeah, publicity about him was about gun control, pretty much by definition. But media about them was part of a larger story, whereas the stories about Sage were exclusively about her.
Seriously: I scoured those articles. “If it was a preventable accident, there should be a side article about fire safety,” I thought. “Or if it’s about the doctors who saved her life, and the other ones who are helping her recover, there should be a side article on those procedures. And what about that accident? Says [IIRC] a spark flew out of a woodburning stove – so, it’s the stove’s fault? Were they not using it properly? Why are they glossing over that?”
Again, I’m not unsympathetic to Sage Volkman. I can’t imagine what she went through. But I also can’t imagine what any of the people in any burn ward anywhere in this country/the world went through. If People wasn’t going to extrapolate from one child to a larger picture, I just didn’t know how they wanted me to react.
*Yeah, I know. I was a teenager. And it used to be a magazine with some substance. Now it’s an advertising vehicle, but it’s among dozens of magazines that have been reduced to that.
Not really interested in it. In the same way I probably would not be interested in the public/strangers knowing the bio of a close loved one that died. They didn’t know them before so why should they know them now.
I think that’s a bit of confirmation bias. It hasn’t been a couple of decades. It’s always been that way.
My mother’s sister died in a tragic accident at age 6 in the 1930s. When cleaning out mom’s house we found old newspaper clippings about the accident. It was so over the top mellow dramatic it would have made Rupert Murdoch say “Yikes.” It was worse than anything I’ve seen in a modern New York Post. I was disgusted about how they exploited my grandparent’s misery. If anything things have greatly improved.
This must be one of those cultural difference things again. The write-ups mentioned in the OP seem perfectly normal and respectful to me - in fact, I’ve been troubled in the past by how little American media seems to care about the victims in incidents like these. I was happy to see them when I read the CNN article, and was surprised by this thread.
Let me tell you what I wish I’d known
When I was young and dreamed of glory
You have no control
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
Somebody’s telling their story. It’s not much, but it’s something.
I don’t doubt that these are true. However, I was replying to the OP:
Which I take to be TV news (I guess it could be radio). My observations are about what is happening (I suppose I should say, what I perceive to be happening) to TV news.
j
And much more palatable than deep dives into the perpetrator’s life and grievances.
For anyone repelled by coverage of the victims’ lives, I recommend that you do NOT read
Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 by Max Hastings. Far more than any other book on the conflict, Inferno devotes a great deal of coverage to human (both civilian and military) and animal suffering. It’s difficult to get through but vital to understand.
Personally, I’m not terribly interested in the details of the victims’ lives. I find them generally to be overly gushing and every single one is made to be an outstanding pillar of virtue and goodness. But if they go too far, I’m free to mute or fast forward through the details. What I do object to are the inane questions reporters ask of the victims’ families, such as “how did you feel when your loved one suffered a horrible death?” I’m more interested in knowing the motivations of the perpetrator and what led him to do such a terrible deed.
From the beginnings of TV news until probably the early 90s TV news just didn’t have the time to go deeper. Each story had to be a couple of minutes. After the death of actual Headline News and filling the time with yapping talking heads it has reverted back to the way it’s always been in other media.
May I ask, were your comments prompted by the latest/current Lucy Worsley documentary on Jack The Ripper, and more specifically the press coverage of the case(s) and how this coverage became a prototype for “True Crime” reporting? (I watched it last night; I don’t know if it’s streaming/showing in the US yet.)
So far as this thread goes, it’s an interesting watch so far as the motivation for detailing the bios of victims is concerned (albeit in the print media of the time). As an expert observes, sex and violence sells, and the bios were used as ammunition in a ruthless newspaper circulation battle.
j
ETA - If the doc isn’t available, this includes a brief discussion of it:
I have no interest in reading biographies about victims; I think, as others have said, that it’s just filler material for the news media in order to keep eyes and ears on their neswfeed.
I am reminded of a thought I frequently have had in the past when I watched “true crime” shows. Every time they talk to the victim’s family and friends the victim is invariable described in glowing terms: “everybody liked XXX”, “they made friends everywhere they went”, “such a wonderful personality”. Just once I wanted to hear someone say “they were a real jerk”, “I once saw them kicking kittens”.
No, they was just the earliest sensationalized murder cases I could think of off the top of my head. I think Loach is ultimately right; you’re just describing a small piece of the overall 24-hour news cycle trend. When you have to report all day every day, no detail is too small. But personalizing/humanizing news stories to broaden interest is nothing new.
I’ve always found TV news sensationalistic. Always asking bereaved family members how they feel about their loss, and if they can get them to cry on camera, even better. I don’t remember a time in their history when they didn’t do that.
It was radio.
Can’t remember the last time I turned a TV on before noon. Likely for a Thanksgiving Day parade, the British Open, or the Chicago Marathon…
Occasionally catch a morning news show when staying at a hotel or in an airport.
When I was living in Michigan there was a bad vehicle accident. The driver was seriously injured, and had to be cut out of the car. While she was still inside EMT’s worked on her, placing a neck brace. The picture of this woman in her main was in the local paper, and seemed to be taken from such an angle that I figure whoever took it was on the front hood of the car looking in. Ugh,