In watching all the coverage around this tragic UC Santa Barbara shooting this past weekend, what appears to be showing up is not an attempt to heal and find ways to forever stop this from happening. Instead, we’re seeing the coverage as a way to profit, with people’s intense pain and heart-wrenching emotions being the primary currency..
Folks should note that media when it gets on the corporate level does not operate on emotion..It operates on the manipulation of emotion… This means, that based on focus groups, in-depth media analysis and other studies designed to understand listeners and viewers, programmers are well aware of what would needs to be said and what angles need to be taken to help folks better cope.
The constant showing of the video of the shooter saying how he’s gonna get revenge is akin to media outlets that endlessly showed the planes crashing into the twin towers.. Its designed to keep one emotionally upended with anger, sadness and fear and while such emotions are understandable and naturally expressed, what’s really needed is the showing of how folks are coming together, uplifting, comforting one another.. What’s needed is the media showing how what took place is part of a larger dysfunctional culture of violence, callousness and entitlement that all of us can take steps to push back on. But before folks could get their bearings we are shown the shooter who is now dead taunting us…
Heck they don’t even have news segments explaining ways for people to heal or resources available for folks who are haunted by the shooters menacing image or the father (Mr Martinez) who unbearable pain about losing his only son has been played over and over.. We gotta heal from these emotionally jarring incidents in spite of corporate media’s profit-making agenda..
Have been for the most part ignoring national media TV coverage such as CNN , Bloomberg ECT…. So much garbage on TV now .. its become waste of time. There is very little objective factual news coverage..everything is about taking an angle or purporting your own beliefs and prejudices whethter political or otherwise.
With selfies, instagrams , you tube, twitter, reality TV programming ; pretty well have shut all of that waste down. Still try to stay informed but mostly through print objective media and quality international outlets.