Talk Radio, Virginia Tech Massacre, Mainstream Media

THE FLAK BEGINS

Over VT Coverage, Some Are Already Faulting Talk Radio







Perhaps sensing an opportunity to build upon the anti- talk radio sentiment unleashed by the Don Imus affair, some in the mainstream media are now quick to point fingers over its Virginia Tech massacre coverage.

Since the nation's worst school shooting incident, have talkers been too quick to look for scapegoats? Or, are they far too stubborn in their support for Second Amendment rights?

Finally, are hosts devoting too much time altogether to what happened at Virginia Tech?

You name it, the MSM has a gripe about talk radio these days. Call it a case of post- Imus piling- on. It's a reflection of their larger agenda: to once and for all shut down a competing medium they have long hated.

Does it anger them that the news cycle shifted before they could bring down Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and others? Or, does the resentment run deeper than that?

From today's St Louis Post- Dispatch, here's an example:

Then the accounting started ... four dead, eight dead, 11 dead, 15 dead, the terrible wheel stopping this time at 33 with a like number wounded, among the worst mass shootings in American history.

Talk radio offered its usual cacophony of uninformed opinion, people seeing in this tragedy what they see in every other: validation of their own beliefs. This proves we need gun control, says the left. This proves we need to arm teachers, says the right, or at least put a loaded weapon within handy reach at a faculty lounge.

Then the blaming began: blaming the response by university officials and cops, guns, permissive social norms, foreigners, whoever's handy. Then the accounting started ... four dead, eight dead, 11 dead, 15 dead, the terrible wheel stopping this time at 33 with a like number wounded, among the worst mass shootings in American history.

This Asheville Citizen- Times editorial praises NPR, while taking a shot at talk radio:

• It was dismaying how quickly this turned into a Second Amendment rallying cry. If only the school hadn’t banned guns, the reasoning goes, someone might have been armed and put a stop to this. This seems like wishful thinking. This newspaper supports the entire Constitution, including the Second Amendment. This is not the poster child for that amendment.

• Also, in the early commentary on the shootings around the darker corners of the Internet and talk radio, there was an undercurrent that seemed to want to blame the victims for somehow not fighting back. The story emerging shows that the victims were trapped and that there were in fact plenty of heroics. Early reports brought the tale of 76-year-old Holocaust survivor Liviu Librescu, a professor who apparently saved the lives of some students by blocking the doorway to his classroom. Along these lines, we will say shame on those who were looking to twist this into a racial incident. The list of victims reflects the broad swath of the diversity of this planet. They were all one thing: Human beings.

• One of the most poignant com- ments we heard regarding this saga was from NPR comment- ator Judy Muller. Recalling her coverage of the Columbine massacre, she remembered a memorial, replete with the trappings of tragedy. A woman walked up to her and said, “The sad part is, we knew what to bring.’’ And indeed, we do all know the drill. The shock, the mourning, the off-base speculation and the political posturing and opportunism all come in their order. And when the dust has settled, we are back to square one and go through it all again when the next incident happens. It is becoming routine. The worst massacre in U.S. history happened Monday, but it wasn’t important enough to pre-empt “Two and a Half Men.’’

At the Bakersfield Californian, meanwhile, this op- ed writer believes talkers are beating it to death, even to the point of taking heat from their callers:

How much Virginia Tech is too much? Forty-eight hours after the worst campus shooting in U.S. history, I suspect some readers may already be asking that question.

I suspect this because talk-radio listeners were already calling the national shows Tuesday to say so. Our appetite for Anna Nicole Smith postmortems apparently knows no bounds, but, for some, collective expressions of grief start feeling like exploitation even before we've grasped the shooter's motives or pathology.

But maybe it's a fair question: Does the gravity of those heart-wrenching murders merit cable news networks' wall-to-wall coverage, or does the all-pervasive attention at some point begin to resemble macabre fascination?

Does media's dedication to Virginia Tech as a news story reflect genuine, widespread shock and anguish? Or is Virginia Tech merely this week's Don Imus?

Were your Radio Equalizer to search further, there's little doubt that more examples would turn up. In each case, there's a clear attempt to undermine the medium, especially when it comes to Second Amendment- related issues.

Two days ago, this site wondered whether talkers would stick with this issue as long as they did in 1999 during the Columbine shootings. Who would've thought they'd be criticized to failing to drop it quickly enough!


Meanwhile, where's the outrage over Keith Olbermann's unhinged comparison to deaths of Americans in Iraq? Take a look:

(via TVNewser) It is an unspeakable and overwhelming tragedy, up to 30 young Americans killed violently, pointlessly, and the rest of us left with an urgent and almost helpless feeling that somebody could have done something to prevent it, and that everybody must do something to protect the next potential victims.

And yet, the same number of young Ameri- cans of approx- imately the same age have died in Iraq in the last 10 days. clearly, while one make take issue with the comparison, one may not ignored the similarities.

Moreover, in a more practical sense, the deaths in Iraq could have been much more readily prevented, and the desire much more easily fulfilled to protect the more potential victims there.

No one questions the nation's grief about Virginia Tech -- but have we suppressed our grief about Iraq?

It seems fair to ask the question: If the violent deaths in Virginia send a nation into shock and expressions of concern and anxiety, why isn't a continuous flow of American blood in Iraq generating a similar reaction?

UPDATE: if we're going to point fingers, how about taking a look at the AP's behavior?


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