End of Week Thoughts 11-6-09

Of course, I’m thinking about what everyone has been transfixed to since yesterday afternoon – the awful shooting in Ft. Hood. And while it is a tragedy, I’m almost equally appalled by the media coverage.

I don’t fault the media from reporting that the shooter was killed when he wasn’t. They’re doing their job. They are reporting the news and someone shooting innocent people on a U.S. military base is news. They got the information from what should be a reliabe source – the military officials on the scene. And I don’t fault them either. Early reports now say that a dead victim was believed to be the shooter, while the shooter lay bleeding from four bullet wounds.

What bothered me was all the speculation that comes with trying to compete in a 24-hour news cycle. Because they have to fill space with something while they wait for facts and details, journalists are now just talking out of their asses. Experts on everything from PTSD to semi-automatic handguns are brought in to speculate on scenarios that may or may not exist! Instead of the media reporting the facts and letting us decide what to think/feel, they’re throwing all kinds of crap on the wall not to see what sticks, but so that when the facts are finally clear they can say, “See, we tossed that around earlier.”

When it was revealed that the shooter was Muslim, I groaned. Much like I do when I find out that the man on the news who killed his wife and kids in Atlanta was black. I don’t know. Maybe you have to be a minority to get it. We just don’t need the fucking headaches sometimes. I’m a black woman married to a white man living in the south. And not just any south. A place where our president is openly called a nigger. Where I have to drive behind the most vile bumper stickers with my kids. But that’s not really the point. The point is that I knew all the speculation and vitiriol that would arise once it was confirmed he was Muslim.

Newscasters tiptoed around it. “We don’t know for sure that he ever traveled overseas or was influenced by terrorist propaganda…” Then why the fuck are you spending 15 minutes talking about the possibilty of it?! Since when did journalism mean reporting possibilities?

Then his family released a statement where, phrased several ways, they felt compelled to reassure everyone that the shooter was American, they were American, and that they loved this country. In other words, “Please, our fellow Americans, don’t let your shock and grief make you take this out on innocent Muslims.” Then his cousin revealed that the shooter had often complained of harassment within the military. He was harassed for being Muslim and called names like “camel jockey.” The media tripped over themselves to rush past that.

It’s not blaming the victim to discuss the consequences of hate speech – whether that was the main cause or just a symptom. In all their speculation trying to find a reason, the media just glossed over reports that provided some insight – from people who knew the shooter personally: He didn’t want to go to Iraq and fight against other Muslims. He was harrassed by other military personnel for being Muslim. He’d tried many times to get out of the military because he’d confessed, “it wasn’t for him.” NONE of these are excuses, but they bear looking into.

It’s like we only want to question what makes people do horrible things if the answers make us comfortable, and usually that means we just want to hear that the person was batshit crazy and no outside forces or actions of others played any part. It reminds me of the Natalee Holloway case in that her mother was downright furious that the media would question the reports that Natalee had been very intoxicated when she left with three strange guys. Her mother said that no matter how much she had to drink, she shouldn’t have been murdered. She’s absolutely right. You should be able to walk down the street as pissy drunk as you wanna be and no one has the right to take advantage of you or harm you in anyway. But that’s not realistic.

I think it would be a missed opportunity if the parents of young girls didn’t point to that case as the perfect example of why they shouldn’t do the exact opposite of all the common sense things we spend years trying to teach them. Just like it would be a shame to let yesterday’s tragedy be just another hot button news item for a week or so and only to be brought up again at anniversaries or when someone writes a book about it.

And don’t even get me started on the media’s need to frame the news stories instead of reporting them. This morning I watched a journalist interview a military official at Ft. Hood who was explaining that it was a civilian officer who had stopped directing traffic when she heard the commotion, went to help, and ultimately shot the suspect four times. The journalist said, “Let me get this clear – she came on the scene, turned a corner, and found herself in a face to face shoot-out with the suspect?”

The official said, “Well, we don’t know the proximity….”

Not ten minutes later, the journalist tweeted that the woman was a hero for engaging in a “close-range” gun battle with the suspect. Didn’t he just say they don’t know if it was close range or not? Am I missing something? Is it just me?