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Originally Posted by fhqwhgads
I don't think that this is on the news because people believe that their deaths are more or less tragic than the deaths of those in war... it's the absurdity of the situation that makes it newsworthy.
If a lion eats a tribesman in the middle of the Serengeti, it's not newsworthy. If a lion eats a soccer mom in the middle of the supermarket, it's going to be all over friggin the news... not because of the social standing or the bank account of the victim, but because of the setting. No one expects Linda to get eaten while picking out her Pop-Tarts.
Deaths in Iraq are not as newsworthy because it is expected in wartime that there will be casualties. It doesn't make their deaths any less tragic, just less sensational.
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I truly thank you for putting this in perspective and in such a simple 'for-instance' scenario. This is exactly how one should approach the tragedy that occurred today. Not in the full scope of killings and deaths that happen worldwide, but in the sense that here, and now, there were 30+ innocent members of an institution of higher learning, yet more importantly, members of society at large, that were murdered in a hail of gunfire.
Killing is senseless, yet to deny that very statement because the media and societies in question decide to selectively report on what would be the most relevant to its target audience is ludicrous. This is only a mere effort to inform us, the general public, that death and slayings are not a commonplace. Or at the very least, they shouldn't be. If one chooses to disegard what happened today at VATech as just another incident, then that individual has become all too jaded by the way the world works. That is what I deem to be tragic.