Do you know what reporters mean when they quote ‘police sources’? Is it possible that they are just monitoring the police radio channels?
It’s also possible that the reporters were not telling the absolute truth. It could be “a friend of a friend of a friend who is a police officer.”
Or they could be lying.
Well, who knows. But every reporter seemed to be getting everything – wrong. I doubt if they were ALL listening to scanners, or ALL taking to one “friend who’s a cop”, and I doubt that the investigators were broadcasting live commentary about their early guesses over the radio. It seems more likely to me that individual cops were passing on early speculation, and it also seems probable that once one network ran it, everybody else picked it up and repeated it.
Journalists do. You don’t advance in your career by being the second to report some big news. Of course being spectacularly wrong in front of a huge audience won’t get you very far either, and if you thought the Supreme Court Obamacare ruling was bad, the trail of errors here is amazing. And this time it wasn’t two big news outlets, it was everybody. I don’t blame the reporters for every single one of these errors (sometimes you are passed bad information), but in a lot of cases I suspect people worked off the word of one cop or parent who didn’t know what was going on.
They might also be doing that, but most of it would come from the police. The police know that dealing with the press is part of their job and they do it in a very specific way, and given how chaotic this scene was, a lot of stuff was just misreported. There is a ton of pressure on breaking stories like this to get their first and not to fall behind everyone else, but in the end I think a lot of people would up reporting “news” based on one person’s preliminary word, and in a situation this chaotic it ought to be taken for granted that not all of that stuff is going to be right.
Well you’ll all be happy to know that my local news station is referring to person who committed the crime as “the suspected shooter”. Note they didn’t use his name so I guess they’re not sure the kids were actually shot. :rolleyes:
It’s not just your local news outlet. You can find CNN and the New York Times and NBC doing the same. That’s just what you do when there hasn’t been an official determination of guilt. And hey, the wrong guy’s name was broadcast for about six hours on Friday, so I say go ahead and call him the suspect.
I believe that journalists are voluntarily minimizing use of the shooter’s name to prevent other psychos from getting the idea that mass killings are the way to glory. Any journalists here who can confirm that?
I remember reading early on that it was a parent who told reporters that the shooter’s mother was a teacher at the school.
You don’t advance your career by being the second to discover a cure for cancer either but that doesn’t mean you should report you have until you finally do. Journalists may remember who was first, but let’s remember that they aren’t there to report to other journalists.
The people want the correct facts and they don’t remember who was first. They do remember that the news organizations are incompetent at delivering the facts and eventually discount the accuracy of the media to report on any news. I think people are unsure now in the days of “Liberal Media Bias” and “Fair And Balanced”. If this were any other job, would this degree of sloppy work be tolerated?
This isn’t Watergate, naming the shooter is actually not very useful information to the majority of people. There’s little upside for being the first to identify and be wrong.
I stick by by original statement. This “first one to report” mindset is purely ego driven on the part of the reporters and the media. It does the consumer of the news, the customer, absolutely no good. We already expect that this crime will shine a stronger light on gun laws. I think that it will also cause more questioning of journalistic practices and ethics.
Turns out the shooter came from a wealthy family. $1.6 million home. Picture here.
They certainly could have afforded the best psychiatric care for him.
The rush to report on this event was just a clown car chase. They didn’t seem to get any of the details correct. But we must have all the news, all the time, and just can’t wait for facts.
Yesterday it was 2 handguns used. Today it turns out to be a .223 rifle.
Yesterday for about 6 hours it was Ryan Lanza as the shooter. Today it is Adam Lanza as the shooter. Ryan’s life is now fucked.
Yesterday the mom was a teacher. Today she wasn’t even at school, she was dead at home, and not a teacher.
I would not be a bit surprised to find out tomorrow that the victims were all actually in high school.
I am not blaming the people who had to deal with this in their small town, they seem to have done an excellent job of responding to the crisis.
But the need for immediate news in the news cycle was a major fail this time.
I don’t think you understand. They didn’t mention any names. They said “the suspected shooter”.
Mental illness isn’t that simple. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that he received counseling and possibly even drugs. My opinion is that counseling is helpful if you’re otherwise healthy and going through a bad patch, or are marginally quirky; otherwise it it is ineffective. Many, especially those who have abnormal fears and desires, don’t like a lifetime drug regimen because of the way it makes them feel and the dangerous side effects. I would prefer to see readily available resources at rates that the young and financially-anguished can afford when they know need it rather than a lifetime of weekly appointments arranged by Mom.
On an unrelated note, I read that the town had one homicide in the ten years previous. A US$1.6 million dollar home is not unusual for that area. It’s mostly gentrification, as it used to be more of an agricultural region.
On another unrelated note, the NRA has no mention of this incident anywhere on their blog, nor have they tweeted any official statements. I don’t see how they can achieve their goals without leading an effort for stricter background checks and increased safety. Not everyone wants to take their guns away, but many would like to gun owners to police things more tightly.
I no longer believe any of the news reports I’m reading, but the current party line is that the shooter’s mother was a huge gun fan, that she and her sons went to the range often, and that all of these weapons were hers. I can see why she might want a gun or two for safety. She was a single woman living in a secluded area with larger cities within a fifteen minute drive. I don’t understand why she needed the semi-automatic that the media is so intent on reminding us about.
Why would this shooting push them to lead an effort for stricter background checks? Nancy Lanza probably would have passed whatever background check you put her through.
The shooter was denied a gun purchase a week ago and the guns used did not belong to him.
If she purchased her firearms from a dealer in New York or New Jersey, she did pass such a check.
So you agree that the best way for the NRA to achieve their goals is to remain completely silent on all incidents of this sort? Their Twitter feed hasn’t been updated since it happened. Their blog has not been updated since the 14th and they have avoided any acknowledgement of the killing. I think that strategy will backfire on them. No pun intended.
I believe that if they want to maintain the status quo then they have to take an active stance on keeping guns out of the hands of outlaws. This incident provoked some powerful emotions. A groundswell of anti-gun rhetoric has been generated because of it. It’s a poor choice to appear to be aloof as the tide threatens to turn against them.
Because it’s not a good idea to let crazy people have guns. This shooting demonstrates that we’re not doing a good enough job at keeping them out of the wrong hands.
This woman was not a responsible gun owner. She knew her son was mentally unstable. She did not take enough measures to keep the guns away from him. If people are going to have such a reckless attitude towards gun ownership then I’m completely OK with a background check that includes everyone in her household.
The position of the gun lobby is that they know how to handle guns safely. They need to make a greater effort to prove that or their greatest fear will come true and they’ll be prohibited from owning them.
Um, yeah. Oslo calling here. At this point, figure that 50% of what you’re hearing is unadulterated bull ca-ca. Someone says something, and the news media, anxious for The Big Story, reports it. Sure, they’ll put “allegedly” or “according to an unconfirmed source” in there, but if people hear it often enough it will be indistinguishable from the truth. The real truth will gradually come out over the next few weeks and months, but some will remain forever unknown, and anyway the media will have moved on to the next big shiny distracting thing before then.
And yes, by this I do mean to imply that half of what you think you know about the mass killings in Norway last summer is false. This is also true of half of what you think you know about the Columbine shooting, and the Virginia Tech shooting, and the Oklahoma City bombing, and…
The guns were stolen. The shooter was denied a gun purchase a week earlier. Connecticut has very strict gun laws. What point are you trying to make?
It also reinforces the statistic that you’re likely to die by your own gun used against you.