Multiple, Multiple Shootings
It used to be shootings like these would be big news.
Is anyone shocked any longer?
Nearly every night, we air stories about multiple people shot in one of America’s cities. There was a time, not so long ago, that these would be big news. National news. News that led newscasts and topped headlines. But no more.
No more because it’s no longer uncommon. Familiarity, it seems, breeds a lack of interest. The shock value is gone.
The consumers of news may no longer be appalled by these stories. But I wonder how it affects the victims, their relatives and folks who live in their communities. Some people may claim indifference. Or react with a degree of bravado. But certainly it affects their collective psyches.
This past overnight, for example, saw multiple shootings in Baltimore, Cleveland and New York City.
In Baltimore, three shootings, minutes apart including a quadruple shooting that injured a 12-year-old boy and three teenage girls.
In Cleveland, six people shot in one location.
And in New York, three people reportedly shot, one fatally, in East Harlem.
And that’s just what I know of as of this writing (around 3 am eastern time).
In 2016, the New York Times published a piece suggesting that many shootings aren’t covered because so many victims are black. It’s something that reflects my own experience of decades of covering crime in the Detroit market. A suburban shooting is considered outside the norm. So it’s guaranteed coverage. An inner city shooting - not automatically so newsworthy.
Racial politics come into play here, too. Some black politicians would be critical when we covered crime in the city too aggressively for their tastes. They considered it racist.
But others in the worst crime ridden neighborhoods welcomed the coverage. Believing, long before BLM, that black lives do matter. And to ignore shootings in their communities while bringing attention to those in more affluent environs reflects the true racism.
A 2003 study by JSTOR, a digital library for the intellectually curious, concludes, “news about murder is the product of journalistic assessments of newsworthiness firmly grounded in long-standing race and gender typifications.”
I think, too, that we’ve become immune to these stories. three, four or six shooting victims is just not enough to break through our collective “who really cares” mentality. But what affect has this on our humanity?
I don’t know the answer to that one. But whatever the answer is, I suspect it can’t be good.
Excellent writings, as usual, Gary! For the most part the world, especially most government officials have become desensitized to all of these shootings. I can't even imagine the pain and suffering to these families and friends of the victims. If one of these tragedies was too happen to any of these government officials, we would definitely see the headlines be big news and justice prevailing. Not that I would ever want tragedy to come upon anyone including government officials, however, I'm just stating that there would definitely be more action in response to any such tragedy.
I don’t think it’s due to race issues as much as the police have asked the media to stop showing the shootings. The reason to this is they don’t want glamorize the shooters. They want it to be a form of rejection.