AJC and other news media bias (Duluth: home, high school, college)

[otoatlanta]

Originally Posted by Steve_W

I don't think for one second the media doesn't skew or glorify issues to there liking. In fact, the media in general is pathetic.

The only thing I am saying is from what I have heard this time, the media has made him out to be a cold blooded killer. The sympathetic comments are quotes from friends and family. We also can't expect the media not to mention that he was depressed and deranged.

I will be interested to see if sometime soon details are revealed that may show people close to the gunman may have known something before the shooting. That is pure speculation obviously.

Now this will probably help prove your point and one of mine at the same time.

The local media here in Omaha covered the story and mentioned several times that "shootings just don't occur in Omaha". I know they meant the mass killing type but I couldn't help but to think to myself how the news reports at least 3 shootings a night in North Omaha (black neighborhood). So yes, I think violent crimes have become somewhat the norm in poor minority areas and the news easily overlooks those shootings when a deranged white guy opens fire in a mall killing 8 innocent people.

Agreed, except for one thing you said, which was " We also can't expect the media not to mention that he was depressed and deranged." In the case of young black males(from what I have seen), we indeed CAN expect that they leave this information out. I mean, when the media talks about the mental health issues of a person, I personally feel the human side of them. I feel empathetic, I feel like that was a person that needed help. When the media leaves out this information, lots of people just picture a monster who wasn't really human. I wish the media was more vigilant about exposing the mental health issues that prevail in poor black communities, as well as white middle class communities. We would all be better off for it. These people need help and we need to reduce the number of these types of tragedies in this country and others by getting to the root of the problems, not by demonizing.

[Steve_W]

Originally Posted by otoatlanta

Agreed, except for one thing you said, which was " We also can't expect the media not to mention that he was depressed and deranged." In the case of young black males(from what I have seen), we indeed CAN expect that they leave this information out. I mean, when the media talks about the mental health issues of a person, I personally feel the human side of them. I feel empathetic, I feel like that was a person that needed help. When the media leaves out this information, lots of people just picture a monster who wasn't really human. I wish the media was more vigilant about exposing the mental health issues that prevail in poor black communities, as well as white middle class communities. We would all be better off for it. These people need help and we need to reduce the number of these types of tragedies in this country and others by getting to the root of the problems, not by demonizing.

Yep, I agree. I think it would take an extremely tough person to have no mental side effects of growing up in a ghetto type environment. The negative mental health effects I'm sure start from day one when they are young children.

I still can't sympathize with criminals though. White, black, Mexican ect.

[pbandj]

I have read this forum for a while, but this thread encouraged me to finally sign up.

You are trying to compare apples to oranges and turning it into a race issue. If you really want to do an accurate comparison you should compare how the media treats white teens that commit armed robbery to the Sean Taylor story, and likewise compare a black teen that premeditates a shooting at a mall or high school to the Omaha story. The profiles are not based around race but around the type of crime commited. I think it is very important to see the difference in the two cases to avoid jumping to the wrong conclusions.

Yes, the media skews stories all the time, but are they a bunch of racists? Very doubtful.

[NorthmeetsSouth]

Originally Posted by pbandj

I have read this forum for a while, but this thread encouraged me to finally sign up.

You are trying to compare apples to oranges and turning it into a race issue. If you really want to do an accurate comparison you should compare how the media treats white teens that commit armed robbery to the Sean Taylor story, and likewise compare a black teen that premeditates a shooting at a mall or high school to the Omaha story. The profiles are not based around race but around the type of crime commited. I think it is very important to see the difference in the two cases to avoid jumping to the wrong conclusions.

Yes, the media skews stories all the time, but are they a bunch of racists? Very doubtful.

I agree. I have seen plenty of stories on the news here in Atlanta where a white guy breaks into someone's house or kills someone. They don't get into some big psychological explanation of how he became that way. He is treated like an ordinary criminal.
On the other hand, when some teen goes on a random killing spree they always get into the whole background, whether he is white or not. Remember VA Tech?
The media isn't being biased. They are doing what they always do. The fact is that there are more stories about break-ins by blacks and there are more mass shootings by whites. I am sure that if the kid in Omaha was black he would have gotten the same psychological profiling by the media as the white kid did.

[Steve_W]

Originally Posted by NorthmeetsSouth

I agree. I have seen plenty of stories on the news here in Atlanta where a white guy breaks into someone's house or kills someone. They don't get into some big psychological explanation of how he became that way. He is treated like an ordinary criminal.
On the other hand, when some teen goes on a random killing spree they always get into the whole background, whether he is white or not. Remember VA Tech?
The media isn't being biased. They are doing what they always do. The fact is that there are more stories about break-ins by blacks and there are more mass shootings by whites. I am sure that if the kid in Omaha was black he would have gotten the same psychological profiling by the media as the white kid did.

As did the 2 black beltway snipers. They analyzed them inside and out as well. They didn't just say, "typical black guys".

[backfist]

OtoAtlanta, you are so on point! And I'm so glad that you raised this very important issue. The only thing that I would disagree with is that you single out the AJC, when in actuality, most media outlets do this very same thing.

When young men from suburbia arm themselves, go out and murder innocent people and them kill themselves, our media can't help but to focus on "what went wrong" in the kid's life. Their coverage of the killer is so in-depth, that it becomes a twisted glorification of him.

But when young [inner city] males arm themselves, go out and murder innocent people, it's dang near old news. Doesn't matter where these guys "went wrong". It's how they live and it's how they die.

Why does media engage in such disparate reporting? They're just giving their viewers and readers what they want.

[backfist]

Originally Posted by pbandj

I have read this forum for a while, but this thread encouraged me to finally sign up.

You are trying to compare apples to oranges and turning it into a race issue. If you really want to do an accurate comparison you should compare how the media treats white teens that commit armed robbery to the Sean Taylor story, and likewise compare a black teen that premeditates a shooting at a mall or high school to the Omaha story. The profiles are not based around race but around the type of crime commited. I think it is very important to see the difference in the two cases to avoid jumping to the wrong conclusions.

Yes, the media skews stories all the time, but are they a bunch of racists? Very doubtful.

You actually make the original poster's point. Trying to apply too much subjectivity to shootings is exactly the problem. A deranged person with a gun who kills innocent people is what we ought to be concerned about. But once media introduces us to who did it, then often times we become less interested in why it happened.

Few people will care very much if a shooting happens at Greenbriar Mall. But if it happens at North Point Mall, then we care. Media is well aware of this, and reports accordingly.

This dynamic is what the OP is pointing out.

[BobKovacs]

Originally Posted by pbandj

You are trying to compare apples to oranges and turning it into a race issue. If you really want to do an accurate comparison you should compare how the media treats white teens that commit armed robbery to the Sean Taylor story, and likewise compare a black teen that premeditates a shooting at a mall or high school to the Omaha story. The profiles are not based around race but around the type of crime commited. I think it is very important to see the difference in the two cases to avoid jumping to the wrong conclusions.

Exactly- the reason the mall shooting is getting so much coverage and they're analyzing the shooter so much is because people can "see" themselves being a victim of a mall shooting- for god's sake, I actually saw "special reports" today on "How Safe Are Our Malls?"! Come on, people! How safe are fast food restaurants- didn't someone shoot up one of those a few years back? How safe are Amish school houses- a guy went on a rampage at one of those last year. It has nothing to do with the color of the shooter's skin- it's all about sensationalizing it because it was a mass murder and it happened at a mall. By comparison, the Sean Taylor case wouldn't even have made the paper if it was a house that belonged to an average "nobody" that those kids had broken into, rather than a pro football player's home.

Look at the mall shooting in Douglasville- that story got alot of coverage and started the whole "mall safety" kick too, and that shooter was black. There were stories questioning "why he did it" and all that jazz. If he had shot a bunch of shoppers, rather than just the guard he was trying to rob, we'd be seeing the same national coverage that the Omaha case is seeing now, with the same hyper-analysis of the shooter's life.

As someone mentioned above- why does the race card have to get thrown into everything?

[backfist]

Originally Posted by otoatlanta

There are already sympathy stories being written about the Omaha shooter. He was "troubled", he was a "great kid", and "wonderful helper",etc. In contast, I have yet to see such indepth "journalism" going behind discovering who Sean Taylor's killers were when they weren't commiting an armed robbery. Prehaps their grandmother's felt like they were "perfect gentleman" as well. Surely someone did, and yet, they are being depicted as cold blooded killers with no life outside of their crime-and their crime happened weeks ago(more than enough time for the media to dig deep into positive side of their personal lives).

Why is it, in your opinion, that media researches and reports on the lives, backgrounds and "what-went-wrong" regarding the Omaha mall killer, the Va. Tech killer and the Columbine killers, when they don't research and report on the life, background and "what-went-wrong" with, say, Brian Nichols (the infamous Courthouse shooter)?

[Steve_W]

Originally Posted by backfist

Why is it, in your opinion, that media researches and reports on the lives, backgrounds and "what-went-wrong" regarding the Omaha mall killer, the Va. Tech killer and the Columbine killers, when they don't research and report on the life, background and "what-went-wrong" with, say, Brian Nichols (the infamous Courthouse shooter)?

They did, don't you remember seeing it all over the news?

They even sympathized with and analyzed his decision not to kill that lady in her home.