You misunderstand me i think.
I'm not saying the pain is not genuine.
My point is simply that the pain/grief/horror/fear is increased to an artificial level due to the way the media presents things.
To my mind THAT is:
- an injustice to the families of those who died in the attack, since it increases their grief.
- an injustice to the general public that now have to live with the fear and the knee jerk reactions from that. Ask any Arab-American what there life is like because of the fear bordering on paranoia.
-an injustice to the general public since putting forth the marketable, sensational ratings oriented side of the story does nothing to truly help people understand and therefore personally deal with the tragedy.
As an example of this on a much, much
smaller scale happened when one station I worked for was covering the shooting of a young women by a stalker.
He had shot he from point blank range while at a bus stop.
The job of the cameraman was to shoot as much footage as possible. The footage shown on the air is chosen by the reporter, editor and ultimately the news director.
(excess footage had been used by the police in some cases so the photogs shot everything)
The cameraman got there before the police or the ambulance. (through use of a scanner)
He got close footage of the woman that was sickening to say the least.
It was very close to the newscast (around 5:45) when he got back to the studio.
The news director wanted the close footage to run in the story,against what most other staff thought. He said "This will help with our ratings. No one else has this footage"
The story could still have been "told" if we ran footage of the woman's body lying on the sidewalk COVERED with a sheet.
There was no need, and no value in showing the more grusome footage.
It just increased the grief for the families affected.
