When Someone is killed participating in a sport at the World wide level, it is going to be news. . I personally feel that sudden unexpected death is the hardest to cope with.
What's got me up on my pulpit is the media morons and their handling of it. How many times do we have to see the footage of him slamming into the steel pillar at 90 MPH? Tonight CBS news had a reporter trying to get the grieving father to look at the footage. He did not want to watch his son die, and I had an impression that the reporter only cared about getting the poor man's reaction on tape.
Right after it happened I was watching a Sports News show, and one of the commentators offered the opinion that the tragic accident had a silver lining. He opined that this would give NBC's anemic viewer outlook a boost, because more people would tune in to watch.
I think he was right. We Americans love to slow down and stare at car wrecks. We watch NASCAR just to see that spectacular four car crash replayed 100 times during the twenty minutes it takes to clean the track and keep racing.
I watch the Ski jumping and Downhill racing at the Olympics because I thrill at the incredible speeds some hit going downhill. The thought they could wipe out has me on the edge of my seat. I smile and cringe when they blow a landing, just as I laugh out loud when someone misses a turn on the downhill and rolls into that red restraining fence.
It's all part of how they sell it to us. Lindsey Vonn is going to be skiing in pain. They are selling us at how tough these athletes are and I am buying that. But I don't buy profiting on their death.
It is one thing to think it, it is another to just come right out and say it.
Are we that desensitized as a people that we can shrug and ooh and aah at such a horrific sight? I turned the TV off last night, and I did so again tonight when they started to roll that video of the crash again. I can't help but remember that Russian diver a few years back who cracked his head on the side of a pool and died. The comedians made Russian diver jokes for months after that. How soon until we hear the first Luge joke? And will we laugh? I bet we do.
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3 comments:
i share your sentiments about the accident. i'm also disturbed how the 24 cable news dwells on the missing and murdered women; the girl in aruba and the lacy peterson case, etc. i suppose the term "rest in peace" has no application in our media world.
The death of the luger was horrible. I don't think it was necessary to show it at all let alone again and again.
However, keeping missing children, or missing pregnant women in the news is important so that she might be found, dead or alive. Showing the crash was just sensationalism. It reminds me of the song by Don Henley, Dirty Laundry.
Mike, My problem is the news is becoming less news we need to be informed about and more a baseline of infotainment. They replayed that for the shock value. I have no doubt that there will be Pay per view Executions on HBO in my lifetime.
Jen; I agree with getting info on missing people out there. But the Media goes overboard with that as well. Before 9/11 CNN was deridely referred to as the Chandra News Network. They (the media)just don't know when to stop. in 2009 When they found another little girls' body in a gym bag down in Florida, CNN ran footage of the bag being excavated.
That is too far. There is no compassion for the victims or their families. That lack of respect for victims says a great deal about what ails us as a society.
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