Paramount delayed the Pittsburgh premiere of the Tom Cruise movie “Jack Reacher” out of respect for the CT victims. The Syfy channel postponed the showing of a “Haven” episode that showed violence in a school setting. SNL and various talk shows indicated they were going on as usual because I guess they were asked if they were. Now, Fox has pulled Sunday’s original episodes of “Family Guy” and “American Dad” for repeats and replaced a repeat of “The Cleveland Show” with a different repeat. Fox didn’t give a reason but The Futon Critic speculated that the particular episodes had sensitive content.
I totally understand pulling episodes that might be sensitive to people in light of the shooting, but I don’t get even considering pulling comedy shows and talk shows or postponing the premiere of a movie in a completely different state (even if it is about a sniper killing innocent people). That’s being oversensitive.
It really bugs me that the early reports on the shooting were so confusing and so wrong. Confusion seems to happen every time a major event occurs, but the media doesn’t want to wait to get all the facts before going heavy on coverage. Of course, in this case, it didn’t help that the local authorities were giving out wrong information initially, but the media could have waited before reporting major pieces of information, but they chose not to.
Yep. CNN is now reporting that she was not a teacher at the school.
And what happened to the guy who was found in the woods nearby and taken into custody? It was originally reported that he was the younger brother of the perpetrator and was wearing camoflauge clothing.
Really?
BBC is now saying the mother did have some connection to the school but not as a teacher. Again, they’re getting all their stuff from local news sources.
The latest NYT article says that the principal buzzed him in, having recognized him as the son of a colleague. Moments later, she was dead.
Yep. It seems like almost every major fact in this story was breathlessly misreported at some point yesterday.
The latest I’m seeing is that CT police are saying the gunman forced his way into the school.
i see one report where he shot out the door glass or window next to door to open it.
i see one report that a janitor heroically ran the halls yelling warning.
i’ve seen multiple reports of the PA system being turned on to the whole school with gunshots being heard. the office area had to be passed at the entrance. maybe a person there heroically died while attempting to warn the school to lock down.
This should be expected on some level. The reports should always be prefaced by where the information comes from and that it’s not confirmed.
Yes, it should. Unfortunately there was very little of that and no disclosed sourcing other than “law enforcement sources,” which probably meant stuff the police had told the reporters but hadn’t confirmed, which means it’s preliminary and there’s not much point in reporting it. And putting up the wrong guy’s Facebook profile (as I think Fox did, and some other places followed suit) is incompetent. This keeps happening with these kinds of crimes and it’s just stupid.
For TV, it avoids sacrificing ratings to the news channels. For theatre openings, it avoids losing opening gross when people stay home to watch news or stay home out of fear of copycats.
Whatever. 
I don’t mind; I’ve always had a problem with the subject/object thingy.
I agree. I’m watching it the morning after and they still don’t have it right. One reporter asked when the children’s bodies will be removed. they should have known that (off air) when it occurred which was quite some time prior to the question posed live. I was distressed that the bodies had not been removed yet because of their mis-information.
That’s actually almost another thread topic. why is it necessary that we know the exact trajectory of each and every shot and the precise accounting of events.
It would be nice to know how he gained access. It would be nice to know which steps to save people worked and which didn’t. But there’s a limit to what we need to know versus the anguish of parents waiting for the release of their child’s body.
Human curiosity in the face of the inexplicable, not to say prurience and our habit of overidentifying ourselves with events that don’t effect us directly.
I don’t understand this either. “Overkill” is unfortunately the first word to come to mind.
I’d hate to see a second story emerge about anguished parents arrested over wanting to see their child. I’m not sure if it’s in place yet but there are new camera systems on the market just for this application. They take automated pictures complete with measuring devices that precisely align everything in a room so it can be viewed as an interactive 3D model.
Because useful information might be gleaned from it. Was the shooter wandering around randomly? Was the shooter headed toward a particular location? Or toward a particular person? Did the shooter target specific individuals, or was there something in common among the victims? Etc. It might be that other information ultimately makes this analysis redundant, but they don’t know that when they start investigating.
None of that stuff is useful to the public. We’re interested in it, and I don’t have a problem with that interest or the fact that it gets media coverage, but it’s in no way useful. It might be useful to police or school districts, but that’s a small minority of the people watching and reading about this.