As a journalist I was taught from an early age not to have an opinion on anything. Journalists are unbiased. It took me well into my thirties before I realized that Michelle, the person, could have opinions and Michelle, the journalist, could be unbiased.
Today,
I will give you one of my hard earned opinions and it comes from the recent
headlines about the mass shooting at the Navy yard in Washington D.C.
Innocent
people lost their lives this week for no reason then some guy wanted attention.
He wasn’t getting the care he needed and he decided that if he had to die, he
wasn’t going to go alone.
No
one knows why he did it. No one knows why the Boston Marathon bombers did what
they did. No one knows why the kid went into Sandy Hook Elementary School and
shot innocent children.
Mental
illness, perhaps.
I
have a problem with giving a name to these murderers.
When
you think of Columbine, you remember the names of the shooters, but how many of
the victims to do remember? It’s the same way with other mass shootings, even
if you don’t remember the shooter’s name, you probably remember what he looks
like. That’s the problem I see with today’s media. They put way too much
emphasis on the bad guy and not enough on the victims and the people who will
be forever scared by what they have witnessed.
Talk
to psychologists and people who can help the victims. What can friends and
neighbors do?
I
guess I understand that the police and the Navy have to know what was going
through this guy’s head earlier this week, but the general public doesn’t need
to know.
This
is not my sunshiny, gloss over anything that’s bad personality, this is the
“don’t give press to bad people who don’t deserve our time and energy.”
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