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11 people, including 3-year-old, shot at South Side park

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by YankeeFan, Sep 20, 2013.

  1. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Let's be honest, on the list of things that scares white people, a shooting is a park on the South side of Chicago doesn't rate very high.

    A shooting at a school in Connecticut, or a movie theater in Colorado, or a Naval installation/office in Washington D.C. ranks much higher. They can relate to the victims. It could have been them, or their child, or their Uncle Charlie who works at the Navy Yard.

    Poor black folks living on the South Side? They don't relate.

    And, if the media can't whip folks up into a frenzy, what's the point?
     
  2. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    You stated it a little differently, but I was making the same point as you posted this.
     
  3. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    As a west coaster, I can unequivocally state that YankeeFan has opened my eyes to the shooting problem in Chicago.
     
  4. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Again: As honorable of a profession as journalism is, there still has to be some concession to covering the news that people reading said news actually care about. Therefore, Sports Illustrated doesn't cover Syria. Therefore, the Wall Street Journal doesn't cover Miley Cyrus's butt dance. Therefore, the New York Times doesn't cover a shooting in inner-city Chicago.

    And you're obsessed with A1. How many times did Trayvon Martin hit A1 in the Times? Maybe the arrest? Maybe the verdict?
     
  5. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    A lot more stories hit the front page of the Times website than land on A1.
     
  6. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    I think the Reverend, who's quote I posted, has a legitimate concern.

    The media, who lectures America about race at every opportunity, doesn't value the lives of poor black folks like it does the lives of white suburbanites.

    Black killings aren't as big a deal, unless they can sensationalize them. If they can inject race into the killing, it's a story. If they can use a killing to tell us that the greatest fear African-Americans parents have is that their child will be murdered by a white man on the way home from a snack run, it's a big story.

    The media isn't even using this story to obsess about gun laws.

    You'd think this would be huge, coming just days after the Navy Yard shooting, but the location of the shooting, and race of the victims means it's not.
     
  7. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Chicago's homicide problem has been covered quite extensively as a trend, rather than as one-off stories. Chicago's homicide problem has been a huge story, both nationally and locally.
     
  8. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    If 9-11 happened at the Sears Tower instead of the WTC, I wonder how that changes how it's covered.
     
  9. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    This is offered up as an amusing aside in a discussion about a tragic story, so ...

    A few years ago one of the scholarly societies to which I belong had its annual conference scheduled for late spring in Cancun. Yours truly was really looking forward to a tropical boondoggle. Then, some non-trivial portion this society (or at least its uppermost leadership) became very concerned about the violence in Mexico. So it was decided to move the conference to a safer place (you guessed it) ... Chicago.
     
  10. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    It's dog bites man. Same thing happens in New Orleans. Murders happen all the time (although, I should not the murder rate has improved) but as long as it's in a high-crime area with they happen almost on a daily basis, it's not big news because it's just life in the hood.

    But the minute a young gangbanger comes into the trendy Marigny or the Garden District and reeks havoc, it's front page news and there are "Stop the Violence" rallies.
     
  11. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    That's pretty funny. I swore off Mexico much to my family's chagrin as they have a place they like to visit on the Pacific coast. But I was adamant. However, I realized that for consistency's sake, I also had to swear off Oakland anywhere north of the Coliseum.
     
  12. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    For one thing, "9-11" would never have become the noun or adjective ("9-11-type event") it has come to be.
     
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